The Silent Slytherin
by Crazy laughter
Summary: The Avatar gang save a dying girl that has a power to bend minds. After Toph convinces the girl to not give up, no matter what, the girl uses the Avatar's power to cross over to another world with the hope she could live, a world ruled by wizards.
1. Leap of faith

**So, this started off as an pure avatar fic, but then I got nostalgic about Harry Potter halfway through this chapter and started musing with the idea of a crossover. So, here's the end result**.

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><p><strong>Chapter 1<strong>

**Leap of Faith**

For a blind person, whose sense of hearing was amplified just because of that, and also taking into account she "heard" everything around her through the ground whether she wanted to or not, Toph Bei Fong wasn't much of a light sleeper. She only woke up in the middle of the night if she recognized a danger near her, or if there was something else requiring her immediate attention.

So, it was a new experience for her to be startled awake without knowing why. She felt sleepy and her head was swimming, but she didn't need to go and she didn't sense any danger around herself, so why did she wake up, then? As if answering her question someone whose voice she didn't recognize started humming a wordless tune that sounded like a lullaby. Why couldn't she detect them through the ground, then? Toph struggled to pull herself to a sitting position. What had happened to her to make it so difficult? Had she been drugged? Had someone been able to sneak in a sleeping poison in their food?

"_Hmm? Oh, now what's this? Can it be that there's a creature stirring?" _The unfamiliar voice said merrily. It sounded like they were in a near panic, rather than being actually amused. Was she dealing with a psycho intelligent enough to drug them? The voice sounded strangely muted to her ears and she couldn't actually place the voice. What had they used to make her this out of it? Why wasn't anyone else waking up? The owner of the voice was coming closer, but the faint steps she was able to feel coming towards her kept fading out and appearing in a completely different place.

"_Just what might you be?" _The voice said as she was pulled out of her earth-tent by her right foot with their left hand. She could barely move and if she was even a fraction of a second slower than she thought she was then the person that drugged them would probably kill her, but now she knew where the assailant was. She launched a rock at the assailant's torso and rolled away, still unable to move properly. If she hadn't relied on earth bending so much on every aspect of her life she would have been unable to move anything with just one hand.

_Well, yer a fun one..._

"OWW! WHAT THE HELL!" Sokka screamed as he hit the ground. The strange dullness had disappeared and Toph could sense the campsite was just as they had left it when they went to bed, expect with Sokka's machete lying next to her earth-tent and the fact that she had just dislocated his shoulder, protecting herself from the unknown assailant.

Aang and Katara were up in a heartbeat and after seeing no one they didn't recognize started to fuss over Sokka, with his dislocated shoulder. The questions on what had happened and why she had done it came her way a few seconds later, but Toph was just as stumped as they were. Sokka's shoulder was put back in place and they just looked at her funny for the time it took for them to move on. They all knew something was going on and since she wasn't talking they just thought it would be better to move on.

"_So, everyone, other than this guy, is a master bender? That's just unfair!" _Sokka suddenly said, with a strange monotone voice, trying to express emotion, but failing miserably. It was so clearly not him and since they were riding on Appa at the time she was as blind as everyone thought she was. It was rather terrifying to think this thing controlling Sokka could do anything and she couldn't do anything to stop it.

"What do you want? Why did you attack me last night?" Toph asked, still unsure as to where the person was. The wind was near deafening and she couldn't feel anything through Appa'a saddle, so having the person talk was her best bet on staying alive until they got to solid ground. It had already demonstrated how it could take control of Sokka at will.

"_Oh, I was trying to kill you that time, that's all. Right now it would be as easy as breaking the neck of a hen, by the way." _Toph heard the distinct sound of the snap of fingers right by his face, when she had thought Sokka was still sitting on the other side of the saddle from her. _"I believe I've made my point. Now, I think you should go toward the south about 13 degrees. This guy knows exactly where to go, so you can't get lost, but if you hesitate; I will kill him. That is all."_

From the sound of it Sokka then collapsed like the strings holding him had been cut. What the hell was this thing and why was it so nonchalant about admitting attempted murder? How could it control Sokka anyways? Did the fact that Katara and Aang were benders protect them from being controlled? She doubted it, since they hadn't woken up when Sokka was possessed the first time. This thing could affect them as well.

"Sokka? Sokka, wake up!" Katara screamed in a near panic. Toph was blind and she had thought Sokka talking in a strange voice was creepy, but Katara actually saw her brother possessed by something, must have been terrifying for her.

"Okay, I think Toph was telling the truth... We need to head for those mountains, there's a valley there. We should go between those peaks and approach the base in as steep of an angle as possible; with this flying fluffball it should be possible." It was Sokka talking, but it sounded like a rehearsed speech.

"Guys? Guys, what's going on back here?" Aang finally noticed that there was something happening. Was he always so oblivious?

_Huh, so that's how far his trust goes; interesting fellow this Avatar, way too naive though._

"Are you some kind of spirit? Why are you doing this? Why was I the only one awake last night?" Toph said aloud. If she could hear this thing when it wasn't talking through Sokka, then maybe it could hear her as well.

_You... can hear me?_

"Yeah." There was no point in being civil with something that tried to kill her. Katara and Aang were too busy questioning Sokka about how he knew there was a fire nation base there to notice she was talking to herself.

_This is awkward. You're not still mad about that whole attempted murder thing, are you? I was just trying to cut off your head. NO! I mean, I was just, uh, wait... Did you know that the boomerang-guy's first girlfriend turned into the moon?_

"Really?" It could be lying to her, but this was too interesting to ignore. Maybe a test was in order. Turned into the moon, you say? "Sokka, the moon sucks!"

"SHE DOES NOT! She rules the skies with elegance and grace!" Sokka shouted in response and both Aang and Katara stopped talking. She couldn't be sure, but she had a feeling they were staring at her. Sokka was an attention seeking clown by heart, but that just seemed too easy. He shouldn't have been able to hear her over the wind and their arguing. No matter how mature she acted; she was still a 12-year old girl, so should have tried a lot harder to be actually noticed.

"You did that, didn't you?" Toph said under her breath, Katara and Aang were more than happy to take Sokka's attention away from her. The situation was more than confusing for them, anyways. They didn't even know that they were being manipulated by an unknown entity. The fact that she did was something she didn't understand either, but it seemed she had a degree of immunity against whatever this thing was doing. "He might be an idiot, but he has bigger issues to deal with right now."

_Yeah, I was trying distract you from the whole attempted murder thing; Seems like I failed rather thoroughly. I still can't get over the fact that you can hear me like this. It's kind of new to me. I'm more used to hearing and controlling the minds of others, so someone like you appearing is rather abrupt and totally throws me out of whack. Now there's a weird saying; what's "whack" anyway? I keep thinking that it's something like a frozen banana on a unicycle, but I might be wrong there. I probably am._

"Do you ever shut up?" Toph asked, getting more and more annoyed as the thing kept on babbling.

_Wow, you've heard all of that, didn't you? As I said, this is kind of new to me, I usually don't have the chance to actually "talk", you know. Of course you don't, how could you? Well, I usually have to take control of someone, or, in the lack of a better term," scream" for someone to "hear" me. You're different, though. If that wasn't obvious already, but you really are. I don't know if it's because you're an earth-bender, a child, blind, or just you, but you're the only one that can hear me anyways. It's not really that easy for me either, I thought I could make snide remarks about those guys without anyone hearing me._

"Are you leading us into a trap? If you're not, then why not try to kill us again? Who or what are you?" Toph blurted out the first questions she could think to ask this thing; to shut it up for a second and if that failed, then at least make it talk about something relevant.

_No, I am not leading you guys into a trap, even though that's what it would look like, taking my past actions into account and all. But despite all that, I am not, I really am not. I want you guys to save me. I am in that military base as a captive and when they found out that I had this power they offered me my life in exchange for yours. After you could fight me... well, I thought you were awesome and felt bad about the whole thing. Since my life was still at stake I had to choose between having you rescue me, or trying to kill you again._

"Well, I guess that's okay. I still don't like your attitude."

"Toph... Who are you talking to? Are you okay?" Katara asked her, clearly concerned about her mental health. It was rather interesting what you could discern from a person's voice when that was what you had to go on with most of the people you met.

_Nosy bitch._

Toph stifled a reflexive "shut up!" when she realized that anyone other than her couldn't actually hear the offensive remark. If it was really talking into her mind, like it had hinted towards, then it just might be that they couldn't help but bring their opinions out, or maybe the voice in her head was just messing with her on purpose.

"Whatever possessed Sokka has been talking to me, in my head, its freaking annoying!" Katara's five second pause before saying her name in a soothing manner told her more than enough about whether or not she believed she heard a voice in her head.

"_Hello, Katara, my name is Zuri. I tried to kill you and capture the avatar last night, but right now I'm angling for you to save me. You're getting closer to me, so controlling this guy is getting easier." _Toph heard Katara sigh at the realization that she couldn't act like everyone was just acting crazy. _"Now, first of all I would like to thank you for saving me from that place. The food is terrible and there's not much in terms of entertainment. I hope we can put the whole attempted murder behind us and you don't get me killed instead. I would rather live after this whole thing, you know. I am now open for any questions and if you can talk for this guy, then please do. If you insist on having him join the conversation, then I could relay my questions through the blind girl."_

"Are you a spirit of some kind? If you're doing this because someone in this world is affecting you, then I can help." Aang asked, climbing onto the saddle by the sound of it.

"_No, no, I ain't no spirit. Frankly, I don't know what I am, but I'm pretty sure I am not a spirit. I'm a human just like you and I just happen to have this ability. But you can indeed help me, like I have proposed already."_ Zuri said through Sokka in a freaky monotone voice. Strange name, but it sounded like a fire nation name.

"Are you a member of the fire nation?" Katara asked before Toph could get a word in edgewise.

"_I was born here, if that's what you are asking. Not everyone in the fire nation is bent on destroying the world, you prejudiced bitch. Right now, I would just like for you to get me out of there. I'll tell you the rest when you get to me. See you soon." _Sokka said these words in the same monotone voice, but it was obvious that Zuri hadn't liked the tone Katara took.

"Nice one, Katara, you were once again able to baffle us with your generous nature." Toph said sarcastically. It was a valid question, but someone who was a prisoner in a fire nation base clearly didn't share the firelord's views on world domination. Katara's question would probably sound terribly prejudiced to someone who was desperate to get out of the fire nations clutches.

"It was a perfectly reasonable question! We are obviously flying right into a trap! What I don't get is why you don't see that! Aang, he hasn't screwed with your head; why are you so adamant on doing this?" Katara was once again desperate to be right, but she was making a valid point. Zuri had been talking into her head and she just couldn't imagine such an awkward person leading them into a trap, but what was Aang's reason? There was a pause and Toph thought Aang wouldn't answer at all, it wouldn't be the first time he'd do something without knowing why.

"Last night, when Zuri attacked us... I've never felt such loneliness. I cannot pick and choose who I save. It goes against everything I believe and the avatar represents _all _of the elements, not just the ones that's major population agree with me." Aang had been a pacifist from the start and he really did treat everyone equally, but would he just forget a thing like attempt murder like that?

_I didn't do anything, I swear._

They flew towards the mountains Sokka had pointed out and after several uncomfortable minutes of silence, with Katara quietly brooding and Aang and Sokka trying not to set her off, they landed and Toph was the first one to jump off Appa. As soon as she hit the hard ground she was sure that Zuri hadn't been lying about the fire nation base. There were countless people and fire nation machinery in the mountainside, probably part of a mining operation of some sort. She did sense a base in the heart of the valley, but even with the vibrations of the mining operation she couldn't make out the shape of the building.

_Now, you... Your friends at least, should be able to see the base. I'm in the little tower thingy in the centre of it. Tell your friends to take out the mechanical catapults aimed at me before making a move to save me. They'd rather kill me than allow me to escape._

A power to control minds does seem like something they wouldn't want out there, where it could do them harm. As much Toph hated the fire nation, she could understand their reasons for keeping someone like Zuri locked up. Was setting this person free really the right thing to do?

"Okay, the base doesn't look like it's that heavily guarded. The only thing out of the ordinary is that tower and that catapult aimed at it. I'm going to presume Zuri is in it..." Sokka was taking this whole "saving the guy who tried to kill us" rather well. Thinking whether or not Zuri had something to do with it was pointless. Zuri had them all in a choke hold as long as there was a reason for him to do them harm. It was up to them if that reason was to have them save him, or to keep his own life by capturing Aang.

After Sokka drew some things in the sand and muttered things to himself he came to them with a plan to get Zuri out of the base alive. Sokka explained all kinds of complex maneuvers and timing issues, but because of Zuri's interruptions and opinions Toph only caught what she was supposed to do. Toph seriously doubted if anyone other than Aang actually listened, since Katara was still against the whole idea of what they were going to do.

So, with Sokka and Katara taking Appa and launching a dive for the tower after one lap around the mountain Toph and Aang should have enough time to take out the catapult, fight their way through the guards and break into the tower that housed Zuri, Katara and Sokka then would make a dive for the tower and Aang would get both Zuri and Toph on Appa as they passed. Toph bended the earth under her to speed along the hillside and kept picking up speed until jumping of the rock she hda been riding and letting it crash onto the wall of the base. It was not a military base, so the whole wall the mass of rock hit crumbled and the men in the watchtowers couldn't fire at her because of the trembling. Toph raised the earth on one side of each tower and felt how the towers, along with the soldiers stationed started to topple over. They wouldn't be a danger anymore.

Earth wasn't an element known for swiftness, but for Sokka's plan to work she'd have to fight through the base pretty quickly, so she started running. She had to concentrate on what she felt ahead of her each time her heel hit the ground. Whenever she felt a heavy sideway step that was the default start of a fire-bending technique, she sent a heavy tremor that way and continued running. If she wanted to make it in time she couldn't stop completely at any point. It was lucky that the base was not heavily guarded and they had taken them by surprise, but Toph couldn't help but think how strange that was. If this base had a person capable of taking over minds, then why wasn't there a heavier guard on such person? Someone like that would either be an invaluable asset, or a threat, so putting them in a backwater mining base under the most basic of guards didn't make any sense. There was more here than met the eye, there had to be some reason for someone like Zuri to stay hidden.

Toph found that she was coming close to the tower, leaving only confused fire-benders in her wake. The interesting thing about that was that the guards were set up in a way that they were as far away from the metal tower as possible. They seemed to be unwilling to chase after her as she ran towards it. Just who was this Zuri person to make fire-bending soldiers wary of going near him?

Toph put aside all of those doubts when the metal tower was just a few paces away. There were no fire-benders near her, so she leapt in the air and smashed her elbow on the steel frame of the tower. She had learned that there was earth to bend there, she just had to be determined enough to find it. As she knew, the metal gave in under her elbow and she continued to beat the metal into submission until there was a hole big enough for her to squeeze through. Stepping a foot inside the tower-like structure she found out that the only way up was the staircase she had just tore her way into. She was pretty certain that the fire-benders now pursuing her couldn't fit through the hole she tore in the wall. The staircase was made out of metal as well, so destroying it as she went up would slow down the pursuers long enough. She then proceeded to go up the stairs and break the one behind her as soundly as possible. After five steps she decided she should just keep going up the stairs, the supposed pursuers probably wouldn't even get that far before they were out of there.

_Damn, you're so freaking awesome! Also, you might want to DUCK!_

Toph did as Zuri suggested and felt a wave of heat pass right by her head, possibly scorching some of her hair by the smell. Rather than trying to get up and make a proper stance she just decided to rip some of the metal from the ground to use as a shield and go from there. The next blast of flames hit the slab of metal Toph had ripped out from floor and then threw at the general direction of the attacker. She still couldn't feel through the metal as well she could through normal earth, but she wasn't blind, she just had to hit the metal with some part of her body to send enough of an impact through it to picture her surroundings.

_YOU'RE A GIRL? Also, could you hit him about seven more times on the head? I really didn't think you'd be a girl... How the hell did I miss that? Then again, I can't "read" you like the others. Probably should have picked up on that a little sooner, but I was kind of preoccupied. Okay, I'm over here. No, not there, over here! I know you're blind, but at least point your head towards me!_

"Yeah, I'm blind! Thanks for noticing! I can't see very well when standing on metal, so make a sound!" Toph retorted angrily. Sure, this guy was basically blackmailing them into doing this, but he could at least been civil about it. Again, as if on que Aang swung in through the supposed window and landed next to her.

"Took care of the catapults, but we really should be going now." Aang sounded short of breath, so there must have been more catapults than originally speculated. Toph couldn't really "see" while standing on metal, but her hearing was still that of a blind person's and Aang's breathing stalled and she heard him take a step back from where Zuri supposedly was. So, there was something shocking about his appearance, which wasn't that surprising since they were breaking out someone who had been in a Fire nation base, supposedly kept captive for years.

_Oh, stop staring at me and get me out of here! Hey, tell him to stop gawking and start moving, the dynamic duo of water tribe siblings started their dive already. And also tell him that it does hurt as much as it looks, thus no restraints. Actually, fuck that for now; just get me out of here!_

It had been established that Aang, or anyone else, could not hear Zuri "talk", but now Toph was interested in what exactly made Aang pause in the middle of a rescue mission. Aang had proven time and time again that he was born and raised to be a pacifist, so he should be the one to be all for this.

"Hurry up, Twinkletoes! Sokka and Katara are coming already, so start air-bending!"

"What? Yeah, right. Okay, I'll take Zuri first." Aang said in a strange choked voice. It was like he had been punched in the throat and since Toph had no recollection of doing so, then Zuri must be really fucked up to cause that strong of a reaction. Aang continued to fumble around while Toph tapped the metal frequently to see how far the pursuers had gotten. Surprisingly, there were none even trying to get in the tower.

_They are regrouping out in the courtyard to shoot down our ride. I've already instructed Sokka and Katara to break their ranks before passing the tower. Appa has more than enough force to cause that much damage._

Toph heard how a great big gust of wind hit the tower and a single soldier slammed into it. Appa and company were here, it seemed. Aang blasted off with another powerful gust of wind and presumably took Zuri with him. After a minute he came back and instructed Toph to climb onto the glider. What followed was the most terrifying ten seconds of her life, other than that time she almost drowned back in Serpent's pass.

_There are stars, I can actually see stars. It's finally over! It's almost too good to believe, I'm out! I can smell the pine trees, this smelly flying centipede and feel the wind in my hair! I would laugh if I could, but you wouldn't believe the grin on my face right now._

"Why would they do something like this?" Katara choked out, again in that "I'm struggling to breathe" voice. Was Zuri going around punching people in the throat?

"_I don't scream, I'm dangerous and they can justify their violence. They know I can commandeer minds, so putting me in chains would be useless. The best course of action for them is to cripple me in such a way I couldn't run away even if I wanted to. Oh, right, I'm mute, by the way. I'm sure Sokka doesn't appreciate being possessed, so I'll be relaying my messages through Toph."_

"You're mute? You poor thing..." Katara's voice was full of pity and Toph scoffed at it. It made her feel uncomfortable and she suspected that someone that just had orchestrated their own escape from imprisonment through threatening to kill them would appreciate pity much.

_She has pretty eyes... and that hair is so fluffy, but if she doesn't try and heal me in the next ten seconds she's going to walk off this thing._

"Katara, you should heal Zuri instead of pitying him!"

"Oh, right! Sorry."

_Damn, that feels nice... I think I'll just... Tell her to keep... going... I'd like waffles, that'd be sweet... The cake is... a lie!_

And with that last, seemingly random, thought Toph felt the hairs on the back of her neck relax. She had not been aware that she had any to begin with, but there had to be something there to relax, otherwise her statement would be insane. Well, she _was _hearing voices in her head no one else could hear, but unlike anyone else with the same problem other people could see the person talking in her head.

Uncomfortable silence fell over them as they left the base further and further behind. Toph was pretty sure she wouldn't hear it if someone did talk, but something about Zuri's condition made the others uncomfortable. Could it really be that bad? How could someone with such seemingly horrendous injuries sound so upbeat in her head?

"Why is no one bothered by the fact that we just broke out a dangerous criminal with the ability to control minds?" Toph shouted out after a solid minute of uncomfortable silence.

"We didn't break out any criminal, we saved a prisoner." Aang commented from his position piloting Appa.

"You ever stop to consider that this person was locked up for a reason? You think a poor little prisoner would try to _kill us _before blackmailing us into saving them? He was locked up because he was DANGEROUS!"

"These burns make it almost impossible to move without unbelievable pain. What possible reason could condone this kind of torture?"

"Hello, the power to control minds for one! Just think of what someone like that could do if they got a hold on the fire lord! Sorry for sounding cruel here, but I'm amazed they didn't kill him instead of imprisoning him."

"Zuri happens to be a malnourished, scarred girl with white hair, Toph. She also seems to be about your age, but that could just be the malnourishment... Just thought I'd correct you..."Sokka cut in and even though it shouldn't really matter with the point she was making, it did. His voice was even and serious, so any point of trying to dismiss it as Sokka being his over reacting self was gone. For them to do something so cruel to someone who probably hadn't even been introduced to the concept of cruelty when it started... She couldn't think of any justification for that.

"Oh... It's still a valid point..." But I won't be pursuing it any further, that's for sure. Zuri should at least have a chance to make the required mistakes to be labelled a danger to the status quo. The rest of the ride to a location Aang and Sokka deemed secure was spent in tense, uncomfortable silence. As soon as Appa landed Toph jumped off and the comfort of "seeing" around herself was kind of downplayed by what was going through her head. She was embarrassed about her outburst about Zuri's power and what it meant to save such an invidual. She had been raised in a noble family and out of all of them she was the one that understood politics even to some extent. The power Zuri seemed to wield was dangerous.

"Careful, Aang. Let's try not to wake her." Toph felt how Aang helped Katara get Zuri off Appa's saddle by using water bending. She knew it was water bending from the constantly moving centre of gravity and the way Aang moved his feet. There was a small creek near to where they had landed, so she presumed that they got the water they used to support Zuri's body from there. She was still thinking about all the things Zuri would think of her about the things she had said, calling her a danger to the world and all that. She still thought Zuri was a potential threat, but it's not like it was any justification for the things that had been done to her.

_It never even crossed their minds. They pitied the monsters that had tormented me, that had loved me and clothed me. They were my family and they tortured me, just to protect their precious conquest! For the war they were winning, they hid me, feared me, used me and loathed me! There is no such pain as to know exactly how disgusted your parents are of you, or the cruel things your brother plans for you!_

Toph awoke just as she was about to crash to the ground from her sitting position. What the hell was that? Did she just dose off, or was it Zuri messing with her mind again? It wasn't like Zuri simply talking to her this time. This time it felt more like a genuine memory being played in her brain. A random assortment of sounds and feelings that somehow formed the image the words represented. It might have been because she had been blind for her whole life, but the whole thing felt unhinged to her.

"Katara, is Zuri awake? I think he- _she _tried to do something just now!" Toph shouted out, since she felt her sitting quite far from her and she was probably too focused on healing Zuri. Toph stood up from her seat and waited for Katara to respond. She might have been able to tell how people moved their bodies through her earth-bending, but she still had to concentrate to know things like if someone turned their head, or if they reacted to their name, other than moving their feet. As far as she could tell, there was no response.

_I was so afraid. I feared every morning and every night._

Katara was still in the same place, but now she was fidgeting. Toph concentrated on the vibrations from her and found out that Katara was crying and wiping her eyes. She couldn't really hear if she was sobbing at this distance, but when she looked for Sokka and Aang she found them doing the same respectively. Could they hear Zuri, then? Sure, it was a sad story and unfair, but why weren't they freaked out about hearing a voice in their head? They were a little too quiet for her liking as well, but she understood it for Sokka and Aang, since they were probably trying to hide the fact they were crying.

_A woman in heavy clothing with blue eyes and dark skin, guys with spiky uniforms, A girl with dark skin and white hair, old guys in robes, a backwards temple, great big centipedes, plural. No Toph, I can't find her._

It had become rather apparent that Toph couldn't discern Zuri's gender from her voice, but now she realized it wasn't even a "voice". It felt just like the time when she went over what she was going to say in her head. Granted, she didn't do it as much now, when she was with Aang and gang, but she had done it _a lot _back with her parents.

"Why do you keep calling Appa a centipede?" Toph asked aloud as she started walking towards where Katara was. Either Zuri was awake as she faked it to have Katara concentrate more, or she was asleep and was dragging them all down with her without knowing it. Whatever the case, she should try and keep her preoccupied.

_Oh, hi there, Toph. It might have looked like I was trying to find and influence your mind like I do with these schmucks, but I wasn't, really. I was... I was just browsing. Yeah, that's it; I was browsing their minds. They had quite dramatic lives and it was amusing for a while, but now I'm just getting pissed off. Have you noticed that the extraordinary of your group think they're below average and the normal ones have illusions of grandeur?_

"You didn't answer my question." Toph pointed out as she reached where Katara was sitting and made herself a seat from the ground. Katara glanced at her and from the way she moved her body she didn't approve of her coming and disturbing her healing. From the way Katara then glanced at Zuri told her that Zuri must have waved her hand, or something like that, since she didn't say anything about it. "Also, I can't "see" you. If you really have read my friends' minds, then you know I see with my earth-bending. Any idea why?"

_None at all, but I can't "see" you like I see your friends, either. All I know is what they know of you. I know nothing of yours. You're a blind spot in my mind, if you pardon the analogy. I also have no idea why you can hear me like this when I can't do the same. Quid pro quo, I guess. You can't see me and neither can I. Blind leading the blind, so to say. No, that doesn't quite fit the situation does it? I guess it just popped into my mind because of your condition. No offence to blind people, but when they're not born into wealth, or aren't genius benders, they're quite useless and – God, I am so sorry for that! This isn't like talking, where you can actually think about what you're going to say before you do. Hell, I can't speak to anyone else than you, so this is unfair to begin with. I monologue a lot in my mind and you just happen to hear any thought I have of you._

"It's hard to feel especially guilty, since you've been manipulating and reading my friends' minds from the get go." Toph "heard" Zuri chuckle and then felt Katara flinch and squirm like she felt uncomfortable. Zuri had probably actually smiled at her comment and there was something shocking about it she was blissfully unaware of. What had this girl gone through? Both Sokka and Aang were unusually quiet and the things they were doing only reassured her that they were shocked by what they've seen. Aang was leaning against Appa's leg and poking the ground with his staff. Sokka was whittling away at a piece of wood he'd found while sitting near the fire he'd set up.

_They see me as a victim. They all pity me and wish they could have saved me sooner. I would have appreciated that, of course, but if they had seen the avatar charging towards the base in normal circumstances, I would have been dead before you breached the walls. I was a carefully kept secret and my family would rather kill me, than allow me to fall into enemy hands._

"Your _family _did this?" Toph asked out loud and felt everyone, except Katara, stop what they were doing and turn towards her voice. She felt a blush creep on her face for blurting something like that out without asking if it was okay. Sokka threw his huge knife at a three, Aang just sat there, staring upwards and Katara focused on healing the girl. "Sorry about blurting it out like that, Zuri."

_Nah, they hardly ever acted the part after my "gift" first appeared. At least they didn't kill me outright, but I wonder if that had been more humane. I had time to wonder about a great many things, now that I think about it. There was this time I took to watching the skies and charting the lights I saw to see if they moved. They didn't move much, but I think they did. Can't be sure of course, but I stand by what I said... thought._

"We're going to end this war and make sure anything like this will never happen again." Aang stated, sounding resolute. He jumped up and then flew off somewhere by the sound of it, probably somewhere high up where he could think and away from the awkwardness in their makeshift camp. By the time they had travelled on Appa they were still relatively close to the base where they had found Zuri, so Toph hoped Aang was somewhere where he could see if war-balloons were coming their way.

_Blaming a war for all evil would be neat, but he should know better than that. He's supposed to be the freaking avatar, but I guess you gotta take into account the fact he's twelve. I did except for the avatar to be more, you know... knowledgeable, since he has all of the information of past avatars, or something._

"I heard it just came out when he was agitated, or in mortal peril, like a defence mechanism, but with bending." Toph said, feeling like she should cut in to spare herself from another random speech. Strange how it took the ability to hear someone's thoughts to realize how your mind wandered into unknown areas, instead of directly dealing with the question. Well, at least this girl's mind did and Toph did remember it happening to her as well.

_Oh, my... That is very... What would happen if the past avatars were assholes? You know, all their minds pour into this impressionable kid and what does he do? Go berserk, of course! I totally think that past avatars were all assholes and they're just taking it out on the world whenever they can. At least that's my theory. You would think that the wisdom of all past avatars would know that violence only breeds more violence... But then again, it does send a message not to mess with the avatar..._

Toph sat there in silence. She sincerely didn't know what to say to that bit of her ramblings, partly because she actually agreed with most of it. Aang had the ability to use all of the bending disciplines; at once if he trained hard enough and from what she'd heard he always lashed out at everything he saw when he started glowing, no matter how they had tried to sugar coat it.

_If the "wisdom" of the avatars boils down to "kill or be killed", then this world is better off being at war. I do not want to see the day with an avatar without an enemy to defeat, or one with a bit of ambition. The power of a near all-powerful god and it's in the hands of one person. That spells disastrous consequences, if you ask me... Then again, I was trapped in a tower and burned in a way I could barely move, just because I had hold over people's minds. How is the avatar any different from me? What is the difference between our powers? Why is he revered as a divine being and I'm tortured?_

Toph didn't know what to do and regretted she couldn't just fly away like Aang had done. Zuri was angry and confused and to make matters worse, unlike Sokka for instance, she could form comprehensible and convincing arguments to justify her anger. As snarky and cynical Toph was she couldn't just say that the girl was wrong in her thinking, but couldn't actually just let her keep believing what she did. Being that bitter about something that wasn't her fault to begin with and undirectly blaming an innocent bystander, who just happened to be the avatar couldn't be good.

"Tough luck, deal with it." Toph just blurted out. She almost immediately felt bad about it, but she had learned to be true to her true colours and going around in circles about an obvious, but possibly offensive subject was more for noble-types, like her parents. Toph herself valued straight forward honesty over all that, since she had known when people lied from a very young age.

"Toph! That isn't very nice... whatever you were talking about." Katara hissed to her, instantly feeling protective over this broken girl she was trying to fix. It was like they had just forgotten that this same girl had threatened to kill all of them in their sleep if they didn't come and save her...

"You didn't wipe their memories, or something, right?" Toph asked the girl, ignoring Katara for the moment.

_I saw no reason to do so yet. What did you mean with what you said? That doesn't seem like something you'd say to someone... in my position._

"We'll fix you and you can go off to marry a prince, or something. Well, that is if these guys don't decide to drag you along, I guess. They tend to do that. With all of those things you can do, you'll do fine whatever happens." Toph said, again feeling kind of sorry about saying what she had said, but still deciding to stay true to her colours. This girl had everything she needed to make something of herself. She just would have to stop sulking and do it. Hell, the Dai-Li would probably stumble over themselves to recruit someone who can bend minds.

_I wish that was true._

"You calling me a liar? Hey, I keep my word when I decide to give it! I might not be willing to sign a contract, but my word is just as good!"

_You lied to your parents to go off and hurt people with the avatar._

"I did not! I just didn't see it necessary to inform them of my decision. I'm sure there's a difference if you look hard enough." Toph crossed her arms and huffed, feeling her bangs move slightly. As gestures go, that was one of the first ones she had mastered to get stuff from her parents, or just to show them she was angry without actually offending them. Adults thought it to be endearing. She was actually starting to regret doing it at all; it seemed awfully childish, now that she thought about it. Especially the way she had done it, just like she had when she was the small blind girl her parents thought her to be. It must have been because they had been talking about them. Didn't seem like either Katara or Sokka had noticed it, though, but she couldn't be sure about Zuri. Well, they had been having a conversation, so she'd just be safest to assume that she had seen it and thought her to be a child for it.

_You saved me from a small army of fire-benders and we're hardly a year apart. Is the only difference between us that you were smart enough to –_

"No, you stop that, right now. Thinking about it like that won't help anyone. Stuff happened, you can't do anything to change that. Plus, my family are traders, not part of an army."

_Our families are similar. They both loved us. I just didn't get a chance to run away._

"Toph! Would you stop berating my patient!" Katara hissed at her. Seemingly she had caught on to Zuri's agitation and thought it wasn't good for her patient. Toph wouldn't know if it was, or wasn't but she knew she was losing an argument she could win.

"Aang and his merry little gang saved me, which then lead to me being here to save you. _If_ I had not been there, you would have killed them in their sleep, right? _If _they had not given me a way out, then I'd probably be miserable, locked up in my family's mansion, playing my part as the small blind girl. See, I can play this game too! It's not that hard! The only difference between me then and you now is that I threw away all the_ if'_s and took a leap of faith." Toph blurted out. She had originally planned to say only about a third of what she ended up saying and she definitely hadn't planned on shouting at the poor girl, but it was her own fault really, pointing out the similarities in their situations.

"Toph, she needs rest. You're agitating her." Katara said softly, trying a more peaceful approach to get Toph away from her patient.

"Fine, fine, I get it!" Toph shouted and started walking off, not bothering to make a scene out of it, even though the girl had been the one to start the argument. She was hurt and confused, so she would have to give her some slack. She made a tent and then lied there in the apparent darkness. She couldn't be sure, but it had felt like it was a cloudy day. It had something to do with air pressure and ears, according to Aang, but she just accepted it as something she was a little less than sure on and left it as it was unless it had any true meaning. For her, "weather" was either sunny or raining. If it was anything else, she was all kinds of indifferent, for obvious reasons.

_Thank you._

Toph shot up and found Sokka to be in another place from where she remembered him to be, so she must have dozed off. Katara was still sitting next to where Zuri apparently was lying and doing her thing. Aang was out moping at the tip of some tree a ways away, so she couldn't see anything other than Zuri's show of appreciation as the cause of her sudden wake up. She felt groggy and very, very sleepy and wasn't sure if she should be angry at Zuri for waking her up, or confused about what she had said. She did a quick check on their makeshift camp's surroundings to make sure it hadn't been some sneaky fire-bender that woke her up and then laid her head back onto the ground when she found nothing out of place.

She had forgotten about why she had woken up in the first place when she fell asleep again.

What woke her up next was definitely an explosion. It was far away, but the sheer magnitude of it shook the earth. After springing up from her tent and listening if there was anything hurtling towards them she noticed how strangely both Sokka and Katara were behaving very strangely. They were sitting back to back on the ground and blankly staring in front of themselves, ignoring the explosions they should be able to hear in the distance. From her point of view it sounded like there were mountains being levelled not that far away, half an hour on Appa at most.

"HEY! Can't you hear that? Get up!" Toph shouted as the tremors of whatever was happening hit them and Toph felt disoriented for a second. When she did regain her footing Katara and Sokka were up and staring towards whatever was making the earth tremble. There was a constant tremor in the earth now, so her "sight" was blurred. "What's going on? What is it? Where's Aang?"

A sudden realization hit her as she went over the way their camp was set up and regained her sense of direction. The tremors and explosion were coming from the direction of the base where they had saved Zuri from. In any situation where the earth rumbled and there were explosions to be heard Aang would be next to Katara by now, his juvenile instinct to protect her was... well, obvious. It might have been a monk thing, or he was just sweet on her. His heartbeat _did _skyrocket whenever he was close to her... Anyways, the fact that Aang wasn't there and destruction of an cataclysmic scale was happening somewhere else painted a picture even a blind person could discern. There was just one thing that could make this thing even more disastrous.

"KATARA! Stop staring and listen! Is Zuri in the camp? Do you see her?" Toph shouted, nearly stumbling over her own feet because of the tremors while trying to get where Katara and Sokka were staring at whatever they saw in the distance. Katara only snapped out of it after Toph grabbed her arm and spun her around to face her.

"Oh, Toph! I'm not supposed to wake you. You are very tired and deserve the rest. Did I wake you, I'm so... sorry?" Katara's words sounded rehearsed at first, but the longer she spoke, more confused she was about what she was saying. The moment she did stop talking she had her hands on her temples, like she had a headache. Zuri must have done something to both Sokka and Katara for them to not interfere with her plan for revenge. Actually confronting them about it seemed to snap them out of it, though, unlike when Zuri had made them fall asleep and had taken control of Sokka, maybe it was just the strain of controlling the avatar, but this seemed to be considerably weaker show of her power, did she have any reason to go easy on them?

_I had hoped you wouldn't wake up. This is hard enough as it is. You can't stop me anymore, but I hoped you wouldn't try._

"What, stop you from killing hundreds of people just because your life sucked? Of course I'd freaking stop you! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS!" Toph shouted towards where the earth was shaking and things were being destroyed. She had actually trusted this girl enough to fall asleep and then she does this. There was a pause when she didn't hear Zuri say anything, if what she had said about not being able to read Toph's mind, then she would have to hear what she said through Katara and Sokka.

_I found my leap of faith. I do not have the luxury of hesitating. I wish we could have been friends. I want to know you. I want to live and hear you make a name for yourself. I want to save the world with you._

"I want to live, but I don't have that luxury either..." Katara muttered out loud, probably not even aware of what she said, since she was staring at whatever Zuri was making Aang do in the distance. Whatever it was it must have been something on a scale she couldn't even imagine, since she was more blind than she had been since she was a child, well, a child without earth-bending, and it was just from the earth-bending Aang was doing.

_I am sorry to do it like this, but... Goodbye. I sincerely hope we'll meet again._

And then, without even giving Toph time to question the meaning of her words the world suddenly lost all sound and she could feel how both Sokka and Katara reflexively covered their eyes and stumbled back. Whatever it was it must have been rather bright, but the silence unnerved her. There was no wind and the air felt absolutely still, but that lasted barely long enough for her to get worried about it. A wall of air slammed into her with the force she thought only earth-bending could produce. Aang could throw air around, but he either couldn't, or wouldn't throw it with the force that the air that knocked her off her feet did. What Aang did was push people, this wall of air slammed into her and tried to tear through her. Also, it wasn't silent anymore, it was the exact opposite, but she still couldn't hear anything from the sound of trees being uprooted and earth rumbling down cliffs around them.

As fast the wall of air and unspeakable noise had come, it was gone. Leaving Toph, Sokka and Katara sprawled out on the opposite side of the hill they had camped on. She wasn't sure if they could have actually lived through the fall if there was a steeper hill behind them and the hill seemed to have shielded them from everything but the initial blast. They were bruised all over, but she doubted anyone had broken anything. The ground was covered with tall grass and young trees that weren't strong enough to stop their fall, but slow it down; Lucky, to say the least.

"What the hell was that?" Sokka shouted the moment he could catch his breath. His silent demeanour must have been because of Zuri tampering with his mind, since he was his usual hyper self now. He was the first one to run up the hill and see what had the explosion (she presumed that it had been one) had caused. He fell silent again and Toph had a feeling that this time it wasn't because of Zuri.

"Oh my god, Aang was there! We have to see if he's okay!" Katara shouted when she saw what Sokka did. What Toph saw was a field of earth still settling into where it had been displaced for as long as she could "see". It didn't look good, as survivability goes, but Aang was probably the cause of it, so if anyone could survive, it would be him. They then hastily settled Appa, who was still slightly dazed from the blast, but as worried about Aang as they were, so they rode on the unbalanced bison to where the explosion had originated from and as soon as she hit the ground she regretted not wearing any kind of footwear. The ground was hot as hell and what she could feel only confirmed what she had already suspected. There was a huge crater where there had been a fire nation mining base and it also seemed like even the mountains surrounding said base had been levelled by the way the sun was hitting her face. She jumped from foot to foot as Katara and Sokka frantically searched for Aang.

She didn't even need to use her earth-bending to point them towards the epicentre of the blast, but she did use it to confirm her suspicion before telling them to go to it. They did find Aang in the centre of the whole thing and Toph jumped next to him, since the ground around him was cool compared to the rest of the newly created crater. The question going through her mind was why would Zuri have Aang do this in such an extravacant way, if it had been for revenge, for whatever her family had done to her. If she wanted to blast everything reminding of her painful memories of the map, then why commit suicide at the same time?

"Aang, god, are you alright? Open your eyes, come on!" Katara shouted frantically as she rushed past Toph to shake Aang awake. He was probably exhausted from all the bending he had just done, but now that Katara was so close and in the spotlight Toph remembered what Zuri had made her mutter, like it was just an "by the way".

"Katara, what did Zuri mean with "I don't have the luxury of living"? Could you have healed her of her injuries?" Toph asked, her voice seething with anger and her insides boiling with frustration. If Katara answered the way she thought she would, then Zuri's motives for doing what she did were all too clear and everything made too much sense. Katara tried to avoid the subject by tending to Aang, but a quick stomp on the ground made Katara fall on her ass at Toph's feet. "Answer me."

"I... I tried, I really did, but her chi was... There was nothing I could have done! I could only alleviate her pain and make it comfortable..." Katara said, sounding sincerely sorry for her incompetence, but still not realizing her stupidity. Toph tapped the ground with her foot to make sure where Katara's face was and then punched her in the face as hard as she could. She couldn't bend human, so it hurt more than punching through rock, but did wonders for her temper.

"She could read minds! She repeatedly took control of Sokka and you didn't realize she knew she was going to die as soon as you did? What is wrong with you? Were you too caught up in feeling sorry for her to realize that?" Toph paused and tried to calm herself. Yelling at Katara at this point wouldn't accomplish much, but she had to know exactly what she was guilty of, since she didn't seem to have the brainpower to realize it herself. "You were there; I was sitting right next to you! I told her she shouldn't give up and take a leap of faith and this is what she did! She knew she was going to die and she knew she couldn't live while staying with us, so this is what she did!"

Now that she had laid that on Katara she didn't feel as angry as she did feel guilty. She was the one who drove Zuri to do this, no doubt. The circumstances and opportunity might have forced her to do it in this specific way, but her whole speech of taking a leap of faith and not giving up was what drove her to commit this atrocity. Even the whole part about throwing away all the "what if's" could be what made her kill her whole family, as to cut away all ties to this world. Did she think she could cross over to the spirit world through Aang, or something? Had she actually succeeded? Anything else was in ruin or just disintegrated around them and no matter how much she searched were no bodies except for Aang, who was still alive, but just knocked out.

Zuri had either blown herself up, or crossed over, whatever the case, Toph was sure it was her fault.

**Zuri**

_**Hush, Silent Child, your life is yours again. A life you fought for and deserve.**_

What Zuri became aware of first was how silent the world was, she couldn't hear anyone in her head and she found herself to be confused and alone. She didn't know where she was and what was going on. Had she been doing something before this? She had been chained and... hurt, burned, to be exact. Then there was a girl, this wonderful strong girl, pulling her away from the darkness, telling her not to give up, no matter what. She had found her leap of faith in the mind of a near all-knowing entity, the avatar. Yes, that was what she had been doing.

Her silence was broken by something she had become very familiar with; pain, unspeakable pain of everything that had been burned and what was gone. Before she had been able to tell herself not to feel it and concentrate on living her mockery of a life day by day, but now it was bearing down on her with the whole weight years of systematic torture brought. Moving made it unimaginably worse and she just lay there on the hard ground. She started hearing voices around her, full of panic and worry. She could also sense disgust and hate and everything they didn't want her to know. Her ability to hear minds was back, it seemed, although weaker and more obscure, but it was back.

And instead of giving her even the limited control she used to have on her pain, it added insult to injury by making her aware of the pity and shock the people around her felt and the unwillingness they had on touching her, even though they did want to help. She hadn't opened her eyes yet and she already hated wherever she was. Either she had just made the fruits of her torturous life worse by making her leap of faith, or she was in a strange world, powerless and in pain.

As sick it might have sounded; she would prefer it to be the latter. She didn't want to face Toph Bei Fong in such a sorry state. She wanted to live, to become something before she would meet her. She wanted time to know everything about that wonderful girl, who was a mystery to her.

"Can you hear me? Can you feel your legs. Where does it – Nevermind..." Someone from the crowd of voices and feelings had rushed in to kneel before her. She could hear analytic reasoning and wonder and feel excitement and dread mixed together. Was this person a healer, then? From what she had learned of their mind from Katara was just this; excitement over having someone to fix and dread over the fact they might not be able to do so. This person forced her eyelids open and a bright light assaulted her eyes. She moved to stop this person from doing this, but they were done as soon as she reacted and muttering about her irises responding to stimuli or some such nonsense. This person had no ill will towards her at all, so when her consciousness started fading and the same voice was telling people to call a number and stand back she wasn't as terrified as she could have been...

Saying she woke with a start would not be quite truthful; she was too groggy and comfortable for that kind of sudden movement. She was frightened and wondered where she was and if she was in peril when she did regain consciousness. She fought her own eyelids and finally saw a plain white ceiling with a blindingly bright light just out of her normal field of vision. It did bother her when she had her eyes open, but they tended to drift closed and time seemed to slide past her without her control. The lights were turned off for some periods of time, but she found she only wanted to sleep and rest her body on the warmth the bed she was laying on offered. Couldn't she allow herself some rest after all she'd been through?

She slept and dreamed of a world she belonged in.

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><p><strong>Tell me what you think. Zuri'll be enrolling in Hogwarts next chapter and will meet Harry and Co. on the train there.<strong>


	2. Colours of the rainbow

** Took way less time than I excepted, but surprisingly little actually happen in this chapter... then again, I will not apologize for my writing, so fuck it.**

**Read and review and shit.  
><strong>

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><p><strong> Chapter 2<strong>

** Colours of the rainbow**

What woke her up was not a particularly loud sound, or someone checking up on her, or changing her bandages, those were things she was barely conscious of and just let them happen. What did wake her up from her comfortable haze of existence was a particularly peculiar mind. Her ability to read and control minds was not what it had been before, but she could still "hear" thoughts if the person was within a certain distance and it also seemed that eye contact opened up their whole mind for her. For her powers to suddenly change like that probably meant it was a price she had paid for her new chance at life, or the same rules didn't apply in this another world, if she actually was in another world, none of the healers that tended for her were water-benders, at least.

_Ooh, I know what that is! It's a pen, a mechanical pen... Or was it a pencil, a mechanical pencil? Why can't they just call them the same thing? All they do is write in different colours and one has to be sharpened, but which was which again? Which one of these would break if I were to sharpen – Oh my god! Is that a telenomascope? I want one, I wonder if one of these gentlemen in white would sell me one? Oh right, I don't have muggle money and I really should concentrate on my work right now..._

Could this be another cross-dimensional traveller, like her? Why was he calling people muggles? Did he think them as low as dirt, as muggles in the road? Did she even want to meet this person, if that were the case? He sounded interesting, but what would she do if she found him to be an condescending asshole when she looked him in the eye. She did wonder if she could still take control of people and this possible asshole would be an appropriate test subject.

"215... this should be it." A man's voice muttered and Zuri heard someone step into the room. She had her eyes closed and hoped she was pretending to be asleep well enough. The man's thoughts didn't say anything about her faking sleep, but the man was rather fixated on her ears. Great, like she wasn't self-conscious enough about them already? Now this prick was calling her an "elf" and all kinds of other mystical creatures she didn't know or care about. Well, he was just speculating if she was one, but it also sounded too serious to be meant to mock her... Could it be that magical creatures existed in this reality? And on that thought, was she one then? She did have pointy and elongated ears, red eyes and white hair, so she was at least extraordinary if she was human... She should investigate this in the future.

Zuri opened her eyes a bit and saw the man sitting next to her bed, staring at two different kind of writing tools with a serious face. These were probably the pen and pencil he was thinking about earlier. He was sitting there on the side of her bed and his thoughts told her that he was there on official business, since her sudden appearance had troubled the muggle community; it was his job to settle the matter in a way that would keep the magical world separate from the world "muggles" had deluded themselves into living in. The fact he had not tried waking her, even though he was doing his job told that he was capable some level of empathy, Zuri knew she was in a situation that warranted quite an amount of empathy. She would just need to make eye contact with the man to know anything she wanted about him.

She had been born without the ability to form words, or even make sounds. All she could do was whistle, since the problem was she was missing something in her throat, she had a fully developed tongue and teeth, she just couldn't use them for all the things others could, but they were completely functional. She had watched people speak her whole life and had come into the conclusion that she missed the parts needed to make the air she exhaled into sounds that then could be turned into words with practice. She would have whistled to catch the man's attention, but her mouth was too dry for that and she would have to get the man's attention to even have the chance to get something to drink. She had some kind of device on her left index finger and it felt like it was hard enough to make a sound if she were to tap it against the polished steel of the railings of her bed. She tried out this theory and she found out the polished metal railings sounded hollow and also gained the man's attention. This world seemed to have more advanced metal work than even the fire nation did.

"Ah, you're awake, that's good. I am Arthur Weasley, a representative of the ministry of magic. Your appearance into a street full of muggles is my reason for being here, Miss..." He then reached out and peeked at the tablet at the end of her bed, seemingly reading her name off of it. "Jane Doe... Wait, is that your real name?" The man looked at her, looking both excited and confused at the same time. The reason seemed to be that he had heard the name in what he called "muggle tube". Zuri didn't have any idea why the healers had stated her name as Jane Doe, but the man only had a vague idea of it as well. Zuri wondered if she had the strength to reach for the pitcher of water at her nightstand by herself while the man pondered over her mysterious alias. She felt absolutely parched and the pitcher of simple water seemed like the tastiest thing in the world. As she stared at the water, without really acknowledging she did, the man calling himself Arthur Weasley got up and poured some of it in a glass and offered the glass to her.

"Can you drink on your own might? I know how my children hate it when I get all fuzzy over their health like this, since that's usually reserved for Molly. I guess it makes them feel uncomfortable." Arthur said so nonchalantly and without pretence that it shocked Zuri. Her ability to read minds without eye contact seemed rather limited, but the fact that this act of kindness came as a surprise to her just spoke for the paternal nature of this man. He thought nothing of tending to a sick child in any way he could, hence Zuri didn't hear him contemplating over it. He liked this man and noticed that she had been avoiding eye contact on the fear she'd be disappointed. She did wish for this world to be better than the one she had left behind, after all. She didn't want to embarrass herself by failing to drink a simple cup of water, so she accepted the man's help. The water was warm and had some weird aftertaste to it, but she could feel how it gave her strength to grab the second glass of water the man handed her. She wasn't as weak as she had originally felt like, everything felt numb and like she was a moment or two behind the world, but that was probably just because of whatever the healers had done for her pain to go away.

"Do you know where you are? How you got here?" They were the first official sounding questions the man had asked and she could clearly hear the unease in his voice as he asked the questions. He didn't want to bother her, but it was his job. She could have probably pieced it together without looking into his mind, but avoiding eye contact seemed rude. It was true that she had no actual idea what the world she was in was, but the glance into everything this man knew told her the basics. There was magic in this world, an over abundance of it, but it was hidden away and spread out unevenly and worked more cryptically than bending. A person either had magic, or not and even the amount of it and the affinity to use it varied, as far as she could tell.

The obvious question was if she had magic or not. If she, perhaps as payment for getting the chance for life she now had, didn't have magic and could only hear minds and look into a person, then she'd just have to live with it. Then again, if she did have magic, then she had a possible way back, back to Toph. Another glance into the man's eyes told her about his many children and all the occurrences of accidental magic all of them had presented at an early age, usually triggered by strong emotions. So, there was a way for her to see if the decline in her mental capabilities was because she had developed magic, or not. All she had to do was rile herself up enough and see if something happened. She remembered that the man was still waiting for an answer to his question, so she simply shook her head and looked away.

Now, to rile herself up... Well, the obvious choice is the last year and a half in her life. How her family betrayed her for their precious war. Those hours and days and weeks and months she was locked up and then punished for even any small sign of her using her power on others. True or false, it didn't matter. If a guard fell asleep while on guard; it was an escape attempt on her part, not just the laziness of the guardsman. Her own brother and even some of the higher ranked guards used her supposed escape attempts as an excuse to burn her in the way she was burned now. Sadistic little fuckers! They didn't deserve the quick death they got. She took a sip from the glass.

Yeah, this wasn't working. They were all dead, she had killed them all herself, checked that every face, every mind that had hurt her was there. They were all gone and the avatar would stop the war, she didn't know what to be mad at anymore. For all her pain, for all of those nights spent awake with fresh burns searing on her body, she could not pay them back, but at least it was over. She had been saved from that, all of that, by the mysterious blind girl. Toph Bei Fong... The insanely rich girl turned rogue ass kicker, just because she liked throwing rocks at people. There was just something so strange and cryptic at that transition and she wanted to know everything there was about to know about it. She wanted to go back and ask her, meet her parents, her friends, her servants and start piecing together the image of this impossible girl in her mind, just like anyone else would.

"Uh... Miss Doe, could you stop?" The man said, breaking Zuri out of her thoughts. She hadn't been aware of the smile on her face, but thinking about the small chance for a normal relationship she had in her own world seemed to do that. It also seemed to make the chair the man was sitting on sprout vines with light yellow flowers. So, it didn't have to be anger that triggered magic. It had to be her that caused it, since she doubted that the man would do it to himself on purpose. Well, at least now she knew she had magic. The man pulled out his wand and after he muttered a word, the vines quickly receded back into the chair. So, now she just had to get better and then start studying inter-dimensional travel, or whatever would allow her to get back to Toph.

There was a rapping at the window of her room and the man was about to open the window by flinging his wand, but Zuri raised a hand to stop him. A nurse walked in a second later and the man named Arthur's wand was nowhere to be seen. The magical and "muggle" worlds were kept separate and it was this man's job to keep it as such. The man and nurse exchanged greetings courtly and the nurse thought the man to be wearing strange clothes, but Zuri really couldn't tell, a little flashy, sure, but she didn't know anything about the norms of this world just yet. The nurse checked her IV's and her bandages and asked if she was uncomfortable. She shook her head again and tried planting a suggestion of telling the man that she couldn't talk when their eyes met and it worked. She could at least do that much and she saw no apparent change in the nurse behaviour.

The nurse left the room and Zuri realized the man named Arthur had been standing in front of the window and blocking the nurse's view of whatever animal was sitting on the window sill. The man flicked his wand and the window opened just wide enough for the brown owl fly to the railing on the edge of Zuri's bed and drop a letter on her lap. Zuri looked into the owl's amber eyes and unexpectedly saw a flood of images and exceptionally sharp sounds of a castle and its surroundings with periodically changing and appearing children in black robes and silly hats. The owl was smarter than any animal in her own world and it was new for Zuri to be able to "read" animals, but the only piece of useful information (apart from the topography of the castle grounds) was the name of the place the owl was from: Hogwarts: School of wizardry and witchcraft.

It did make sense then to presume that the letter was the admission letter into the place. The owl was still sitting there, staring at her and she realized it was waiting for her okay to go. She seemed to have told the owl to stay still as the images and sounds started flowing into her head. She waved her hand and broke eye contact and the owl flew out of the window. Arthur Weasley then closed the window with a wave of his wand and stepped closer to the bed.

"Open it; it's your enrolment letter into Hogwarts. You're lucky, all my kids go there and my youngest boy is also enrolling this year, Ronald, but everyone other than Molly calls him Ron." Really, this man was more interested in talking about his kids than doing his job. Well, the way her mind had been wandering off it was lucky she wasn't faced with some career driven greenhorn. Then again, when she thought about it, this man had been steadily gathering information on her without asking questions that would make her uncomfortable, but there had been no way he could have predicted everything that had happened. This was one lucky man; he had been able to do his job while only doing things he enjoyed.

Zuri was quick to open the envelope and although it shouldn't have surprised her, she was still surprised at the fact she couldn't read the writing on the envelope. She knew what it said from what Arthur Weasley had in his head about his youngest son's admission into the same school. She was to be at the station 9 and three quarters (something about a brick column there) at the time specified in the envelope with the things listed on the envelope. She would have to get money somewhere to get the items, though...

"Strange how they would send it this late in the year. There's no way you'll be up and about by the time the train leaves." The man sounded ashamed for saying this and a glance into his eyes told her how he thought that someone with her kinds of injuries and mysterious circumstances still surrounding her couldn't enrol at Hogwarts before they were resolved. She also found out that Arthur Weasley had been sent out to inquire if the matter had any relation to the magical world, so if he didn't tell anyone, then the ministry he worked for couldn't stop her from going to this school.

Maybe she should test out her ability in mental manipulation a little sooner than expected. She didn't know if this world had means of finding out what she had done back in her own world, but she was sure mass murder was illegal. She genuinely hoped there would be no harm to Arthur Weasley's mind as she used this obscure form of her old power to alter his memories.

She tapped the frame of the bed again to get his attention.

**Arthur Weasley**

He was standing in the muggle hospital he had been assigned to check on a possible magical affair. He must have been getting himself too worked up about all the muggle "science" all around him, since for a moment he had no idea why he was standing there.

Yes, now he remembered. There had been the girl with severe burns that seemingly apparated out of nowhere. Tragic, even if she had been a witch or a magical being, but she was just some poor girl that had been tortured for years by monstrous muggles, probably because of her magical appearance. Arthur really hoped he could do something more than inform another part of the ministry and have muggle police handle it. It was heartbreaking to see the girl just lying there, asleep and bandaged so heavily. All he could think about was that it could be one of his own children if there were actually people evil enough out there to systematically burn a child just because of her extraordinary appearance.

He was half hoping the culprits were wizards, so that they'd spend the rest of their life in Azkaban. There was little chance that the muggle world would have a sentence rivalling it, although he had heard that there was an unwritten rule in prisons about child abusers, but this was from the muggle tube, so it might just be fiction. It was unlikely that they announced every inmate's crimes, so the others would know.

He walked out of the hospital, his eyes getting distracted by all the interesting muggle innovations around him, but he just couldn't muster the energy to inspect them any closer. He had paperwork to do and finally have this matter behind him. He walked out the doors of the hospital and tried not to acknowledge all the strange looks he got. The way he saw it he could never actually meld in with muggles, taking his fascination and ignorance over the most mundane of their things, so if he was going act like a nut job around them, then he might as well dress the part. Also, he had no idea how to dress like a muggle. Every single time he seriously tried to do so, he always ended up looking like an exotic bird made out of fabric, so he had given up on trying and went with the flow; it ended up looking about the same, anyways.

He walked into an empty looking alley and then apparated into the ministry of magic. He was able to get to his desk and flicked his wand out to summon the paperwork he'd have to fill out to put this matter to rest. He marked the date and his own name and then paused at the name of the victim. The girl had been asleep, but muggle hospitals at least had that much information about a patient from the identification muggles carried around, so he should know this much.

_Uh... Miss Doe, could you stop?_

He had said that, he remembered that, but why would he say that if the girl had slept the whole time? He tried to recall the situation, but all he could think of was him sitting at the girl's bedside for a while before leaving, feeling angry for all the evil in the world. Miss Jane Doe, that was her name, now he remembered. He had checked it off of the clipboard at the end of the girl's bed.

_Your appearance into a street full of muggles is my reason for being here, Miss... Jane Doe._

Again, he remembered saying that, but couldn't think of the reason he would be talking to an unconscious girl as if she was awake. And why was it that he could only remember saying those words, but not why in the first place? Had he eaten something hallucinogenic again? It was probably that damn Smith, slipping shrooms into his coffee again just for shits and giggles. Or maybe it was Awery, he had a bad habit of testing his concoctions on his co-workers.

Dismissing the strange conflict in his mind as a prank done to him by his co-workers he finished the paperwork and by the end of the day he didn't remember the poor girl at all, or any of the things he wrote in the report.

**Zuri**

After two different nurses and the doctor assigned to treating her out of the way she left the hospital with a dozen prescriptions to medicine that could knock out a platypus-bear ten times over in the small backpack she had stolen, along with her clothes, from a bald kid with a terminal sickness. The scent of death hung heavy even in the clothes she wore now, so it's not like the kid would need them. Then again, she felt quite lost in this strange town with buildings that shone back the sun's brilliance onto her delicate skin. The day was crisp and not really hot per say, but she had been aware of how easily her skin burned in direct sunlight and even the clear skies of autumn felt like the summer heat for her. Her eyes were exceptionally sensitive to bright lights as well, it might have something to do with them being red, but she wouldn't know anything about that. She just knew the facts about her own body and they told her to stay out of the sun and bright places. It was not like sunlight hurt her, or anything like that, it was just the it felt uncomfortably hot and she sweated like crazy when in direct contact with it. Also, her skin got bright red and flaked away for days if she was under the sun for too long; she didn't like that.

Now she was heading towards what the man called Arthur Weasley called the Leakey Cauldron. It was an entrance to the place she could get the things in the list along with her admission letter to Hogwarts. As to how she was supposed to afford the things specified or how to get to this place she had no idea, yet. She was sure she would think of something when she got there. She kind of had to; otherwise she would be interrogated and then incarcerated as a criminal. Spending another bunch of years in a small crude room wallowing in her own misery didn't sound very appealing to her.

She needed access to this world's magic to find a way back to Toph and this admission to Hogwarts had quite literally fallen into her lap. People were giving her more surprised looks than anything and a quick glance into the minds of a few people told her that they thought she was wearing a pretty convincing elf costume and tried to place her in a game, or a book. Some guy named Tolken was mentioned more than once, but Zuri didn't really pay attention.

She had made a doctor give her all the medicine she needed to banish the pain of her burns long enough for her to do her shopping and also the medicine to keep her more recent burns and wounds from getting infected, but the bandages had started to itch and shave like mad under the layer of clothes and in the sun. She knew she wasn't far from the leaky Cauldron, but she couldn't wait to get indoors and sit down.

And just as the pain in the soles of her feet was getting unbearable, even with all the medication the healer's mind told she could take without dying numbing it, she spotted the sign of the leaky cauldron and the seemingly rundown storefront. There was a ghostly image of storefront with grimed up windows and trash bags lying around it over the real storefront with partially blacked out windows with the sign's logo imprinted on the glass and a heavy looking wooden door. She walked closer and there was a couple of inches between the real wall and the illusion. She hadn't forgotten about her pain, or discomfort, abut she just had to test something out.

She stepped into the space between the real storefront and the illusion and after making sure her body was inside the illusion, she put two of her fingers in her mouth and let out the loudest whistle she could. There was a slight pause in the chatter from inside the bar, but any of the people passing her didn't react at all. So, the magic of this world was able to alter sensory perception, like she had been able to do in her own world. It also seemed like these illusions could be attached to objects and to discriminate between the ones subjected to it.

She pried her attention from the magical storefront and stepped inside the Leaky Cauldron. She didn't like what she saw there. A smoky room mostly filled with shady and drunk people bent over their pints, or playing a game with what seemed to be miniature explosives. She didn't see a place to sit anywhere and contemplated on having someone think they were being chased by a swarm of vulture-wasps to free a chair somewhere, but then quickly stopped herself before making eye-contact with anyone, since she really didn't want to attract attention to herself. She decided to walk to the counter and then tapped the counter to attract the bartender's attention. Her "muggle" clothing and her red eyes gave her a solid five seconds to look into the man's mind without distractions and she now knew that she would have to ask someone to open the wall in the back alley of the pub, or sneak in behind someone.

Someone shouted for the bartender to get them another pint and the man hurried an "excuse me, miss" in her direction and hurried to fill the pint. This suited Zuri just fine, since she had to think about her next move anyways. She had to get money and some place to stay for the nights before the train would depart from the station 9 ¾, but to get the room, she needed money and she wasn't sure if she could depend on her ability to influence minds when it was weakened as it was. Still, it seemed like wizard didn't have a way of knowing when she was poking around in their head, so if she couldn't control minds as effectively as before, she could at least read them. Still, without any money at all, she couldn't do much. Maybe she had to take a risk after all and try to control someone.

That was when a man of gargantuan size walked into the bar with a scrawny boy with green eyes wide as saucers and untamed black hair. The man boomed out a string of words Zuri could barely make out because of his thick accent and even thicker beard and the bar was suddenly at a buzz around the boy with green eyes. Why would they do that? Was this kid this world's Avatar, or something?

Well, it was a welcome distraction, nonetheless. With the barkeeps mind preoccupied with clamouring over the boy, it should be easier to have him believe she was staying in an empty room upstairs and had lost her key. One problem solved, at least. If it worked, that was.

**Harry Potter**

The sudden attention and all the hands that he found himself shaking were quite a shock and he didn't know how to react to it, so he just nodded and shook hands and probably looked as terrified as he was. Who were all these people and why were they shaking his hands like he had saved their grandmother from a burning house and brought their cat back to life?

When Hagrid was too busy chuckling at the situation Harry ended up glancing around the bar to find someone who could get these people to stop blocking his escape routes. His eyes fell on a peculiar sight, taking to account that he was in a wizard bar. There was girl with white hair and elfish ears holding the barkeep by his sleeve and staring intently into his eyes. Just as he started to wonder how strange it seemed, the barkeep broke eye contact while seemingly apologizing to the girl while he handed the girl a key to a room upstairs. It might have been the white hair and pointy ears that caught his attention, but what made the girl stand out in a wizard bar was that she was wearing all muggle clothes, worn looking sneakers and a sweat suit to go with them to be exact.

"Now, now, you mean well and all, but we have things to do and places to be down in Diagon Alley." Hagrid said and parted the crowd surrounding Harry like someone would part a pair of curtains. He either ignored the muttered curses and wizards stumbling on furniture, or didn't notice them from behind the wall of his beard and hair. Harry glanced to where the girl had been standing a moment ago, but she had disappeared in the commotion, probably went up to her room in the Leaky Cauldron. It was none of his business, but an elf wearing muggle clothes was another thing he would have liked to ask about, but now he wasn't sure he hadn't imagined the girl.

"Would you like something to drink before going to Diagon Alley?" The barkeep glanced at Harry and then back at Hagrid. The man had a strangely vacant look in his eyes, but seemed nice enough. "Maybe something that will help settle your stomach, Hagrid? I take it you're on your way to Gringots and we both know they always stick you with the breakneck cart and maybe a Creambeer for Mr. Harry Potter?"

Harry had a strange feeling that the man was trying to stall them for some reason, but a look at Hagrid's eyes told him that they'd spend at least the remainder of what Hagrid would drink in the seedy bar. Harry dreaded the idea of people crowding around him and invading his personal space again, but he also wanted to find out what this creambeer was.

"Come on, Harry, it's my treat!" Hagrid boomed out and sat down on one of the stools around the bar. Several of the stools had been deserted after Hagrid parted the crowd around Harry and Harry hopped up on the stool next to Hagrid. Hagrid got a huge pint of something that was lime green and smelled strongly of citrus and Harry got a smaller pint of something that smelled sweet and rich, like the name suggested. He took a sip and immediately loved the beverage and didn't hope for Hagrid to hurry up with his medicine. He wanted to enjoy what was offered to him as long as possible.

Hagrid and Harry were halfway done with their respected drinks when Harry noticed the white haired elf-eared girl hop up on the stool at the opposite end of the bar. The girl was smaller than Harry had originally thought, she was as short as he was and seemed to be even scrawnier, but Harry didn't know if that was normal for elves, if she was one to begin with. The girl glanced in their direction and Harry realized the girl was an albino, he'd heard in his old school that there were people born without pigment in their skin, hair, or eyes and so they ended up pale, white-haired and with red eyes. He had thought it was interesting at the time, but then the teacher told him that it was incredibly rare on humans and he would probably never see one.

"Hagrid?" Hagrid turned to Harry and Harry motioned for him lean in closer. Hagrid leaned closer and all Harry could see was parts of Hagrid's coat and Hagrid's face. He felt claustrophobic, but his curiousity had already made him go this far. "Is that girl at the end of the bar an elf?"

Hagrid leaned back up and glanced at the girl briefly and then turned back to his drink. Harry glanced at the girl and noted that she was drinking a glass of water, like she had swallowed something just then.

"I doubt she's a full-blooded elf, Harry. Elf are woodfolk and don't socialize with wizards or muggles. Also, it's not polite to stare." Hagrid said gruffly and gulped his drink down. Harry hadn't even realised he had been staring, but that's what he had actually been doing. It was not polite and he knew that and he muttered an apology and drank his own beverage down.

**Zuri**

The boy had taken an interest in her and his staring was starting to bother her. She reached down into her stolen backpack and pulled out one of the prescription medicine she had made the healer give her. She unscrewed the top and then painstakingly read the label. She had read the alphabets of this world several times off of other peoples' minds, but actually using that information herself proved a little more difficult than in her own world. It was probably because she had no past recollection of her own of reading the signs, so she had to dig in other peoples' memories to get them, confusing, to say the least.

Amphetamine, that's what the healer had called them, something that would ensure she had the energy to do what needed to be done and now she felt like falling down asleep. She rolled one small pill on her hand and doubted if it would do the trick, but every other tonic she'd been given had been effective, so she fought down the urge to take more. She swallowed the small pill with the remainder of her water and glanced in the direction of the huge man. Luckily it seemed like they were heading to Diagon Alley as well, so the dilemma of the brick wall was solved. The huge man and the kid with the glasses got up and stomped through the bar. Zuri counted to ten before following them out and was able to slip into the steps leading down to Diagon alley behind them.

She followed the two down the stairs and then down a street filled with distractions she didn't have the time or patience for. She needed money and since the man and the kid hadn't stopped at any of the shops they had already passed, they were heading to a bank of some sort. At least, that's what she hoped they were doing, since the thought of stopping and "asking" someone terrified her, so many things could go wrong.

The huge man stopped at a large building with the front made out of white marble and it was so universally bank-like Zuri decided to stop following the duo and started up the steps. There was a strange kind of itching under her skin and over her scars and she noticed halfway up the stairs that she was hopping them up three at a time. The amphetamine seemed to be doing its job and her thoughts weren't swimming in her head anymore, they were zipping around at lightning speed, but she felt like she could keep herself focused still, she had to.

She walked in the bank and practically glided over to the counter, where a gruff looking goblin greeted her with a court nod. She beamed out a smile at the small thing and was happy to find out that its mind flowed into her as easily as the owl's had, but now she was in familiar ground, as the goblin had conscious thought and was quite logical and intelligent. The process of getting money out of this bank would be to make this thing think she had an account here and she would have to use her new power in a more intricate way than ever before. This would be as good of a test as any

The huge man and the kid walked in and the huge man didn't disappoint in giving her another distraction to do her thing. She needed for the goblins in this bank to have no memory of her, so maybe she should tie any memory of her into something they'd try to put out of their mind... Well, it didn't seem like the goblins were much for music, so a tune playing in their heads should suffice.

"_I know a song that will get on your nerves, get on your nerves, your nerves! I know a song that will get on your nerves, get on your nerves, your nerves!"_

Zuri concentrated on conveying the lyrics into the gobling's mind and noticed that it was working from the annoyed look in its face and as a pleasant surprise she noticed other goblins had started to tap or hum the tune without realizing it. Seemed like she didn't need eye contact when it came to magical creatures and that fact made things infinitely easier for her, now she wouldn't be forced to tour the bank and manipulate each and every goblin in turn; she really didn't want to leave anything behind that would lead back to her.

"How can I help you, Miss?" The goblin asked, while trying to stop himself from humming the tune playing in his head. Zuri looked into the goblin's eyes and then implanted a suggestion that she was the youngest of a big customer of theirs, leaving it for the goblin to figure out where she could steal enough money without it being noticed. With her old power, she could have just told them to do it and then erase their memory of it and tell them to cover up any evidence that might come up unconsciously, but now she had to use different methods.

"Ah, welcome, Miss Black. Do you have your key with you?" The goblin asked and now Zuri could only hope that her new power was powerful enough for the goblin to disregard something as important to him as rules and regulations, over an illusion. She searched her pockets and found a small figurine of a man in one of the pockets of the sweat suit she was wearing. The boy that she had stolen it from could be missing it by now and she felt bad for a second before handing it to the goblin and pushing his mind as hard as she could to make him think it was the key he was excepting it to be.

To her everlasting surprise it became just that when the goblin took it in its hands. So, magic was something that could be influenced through mental manipulation... interesting. The goblin waved for her to follow and she felt like she floated over the counter and skipped behind the goblin, not able to keep still because of the itch in her bones. She was only slightly annoyed by the boy with green eyes staring at her sudden dexterity in disbelief and quickly put it out of her mind. She had to keep focused on feeding the song that would conceal any memory of her into the goblins' minds. Everyone hated it when they had a song stuck in their head and tried their hardest to get rid of it, so it should work.

The boy with green eyes and the hairy giant passed her and her humming goblin and climbed into something that looked like a mining cart. Zuri's goblin was humming a tune while opening a cupboard in a small room that looked like an office for goblin people. What the gobbling came back with was a small leather pouch and a golden key with what Zuri presumed to be the Black family insignia. Where there two keys needed or was the goblin unconsciously replacing the fake key Zuri had handed it? The goblin handed her the pouch without a word, now signing the song under his breath. Maybe she had the "volume" of the song a little too high...

She toned down the song and the goblin did seem to regain focus in his actions and they headed to the station where the boy and the hairy giant had gone before them and after only a few seconds after the goblin waved his hand a similar cart came to a stop in front of them. The ride down was fast, full of turns and the wind whipping her hair back was annoying, but she still enjoyed it immensely. She hurried the goblin to open the vault and was impressed by all of the gold and silver and copper coins in it. Now, how much did she need and much could she actually carry out?

"_MINE! IT'S ALL MINE! YOU WILL DIE!" _Were the thoughts that Zuri heard within the roar of something very big and very angry to her left. She turned to face this thing and was thinking whatever deity was listening that she was still high on amphetamine, since without the itching in her bones and skulls she'd probably be too scared to do anything. Now she could see the calculating and cruel mind behind the dragon's eyes and knew that she had a chance of affecting it.

_You are not going to attack your master, are you? Down, you overgrown lizard!_

The dragon flinched back and shook its mane, as if in confusion.

"_YOU ARE NOT ONE OF –" _The dragon's thoughts were loud and gigantic, but it was not like it was particularly smart. Zuri decided to interrupt the beast before it would have too much time to think about what it saw and what it knew.

_DOWN! Stay out of my way, lizard!_

The dragon retreated and stepped down from the pile of gold coins it had been resting on (the vault was so full of money there were several) and curled itself to guard something that didn't look like money, so Zuri's drug riddled mind didn't pay it much attention. A quick glance at the goblin and she found out that the pouch she had been handed could hold up to a thousand of each type of coin without weighing more than a normal pouch full of metal coins would. Zuri didn't feel bad about shovelling the pouch full to the brim with each kind, but now the dragon would know that she had taken things from the vault. The dragons in her own world used to keep close taps on the treasures they collected, so dragon going wild would suggest someone had stolen something from its treasures. The dragon acted as a guard and as a burglary alarm, it seemed.

They would have been awesome if they didn't breathe fire. For various reasons Zuri hated and felt a terror in her whenever she saw fire. Only thing it had ever brought her was pain and heartache, so her phobia was completely justified. There was a lot more keeping her in that tower apart from the burns. Psychological abuse and the way they had been able to render her ability powerless by making her deathly afraid of fire... She didn't want to think about it and stormed out of the vault, leaving the dragon to count its slightly smaller fortune.

Getting out of the bank was easy and she had to stop herself from smiling at the stupefied expression of people when they found the goblin's humming a tune without noticing. She was pretty certain that the tune she had left in the goblins' heads would dissolve any memory of her by the time they checked the amount of money in the vault again, which seemed to be in a few days.

Oh, wow, was Diagon Alley this shiny and bright when she went in the bank? Everything shone and sparkled light in strange ways, some of the coloured light reflecting off of the things on sale on the carts lingering on the objects and then cascading down onto the ground in a beautiful veil of all the colours of the rainbow and some she didn't have a name for. Could it be the effect of the amphetamine that made her see all these new colours? The itch on her skin and bones made her feel feverish and she felt how beads of sweat had started to form on her forehead. She felt great, but she knew she wouldn't be taking anymore of the stuff anytime soon. She felt like her body was trying to burn itself out and was worried if it actually would.

Oh, right, she should buy everything she needed. She pulled out the folded list of required books and headed into what looked like a clothes shop. She didn't like all the weird looks she was getting, probably only in part, because of her very "muggle" clothes. At least she hoped wearing a cape and robes would reduce the stares into those of interest, rather than the suspicious glares she was now getting.

"Welcome, sweetie! Do take a seat, I'll be with you in a minute!" A nice looking elderly woman shouted as she entered the shop. The woman was busy with two boys about her age and the one with silvery blond hair and overall untrusty looking face gave her a nearly disgusted look after seeing what she was wearing. The temptation to make this boy afraid of the colour blue was almost unbearable, but she didn't want too many strange things happening around her to avoid undue attention. She almost didn't recognize the other boy standing on a pedestal having his measurements taken, since there was a faint shimmer of burgundy light streaming out of a bright lightning mark on the boys forehead. The green eyes looking at her in surprise gave the boy that had been with the giant away. How long had she been staring at all the pretty colours outside, or had he gone out of the bank before her?

She sat down on a chair set on the side of the door and looked around for something to drink and a cup of water floated in front of her, as if answering to her unasked question. The old lady gave her a smile and a nod when she looked at her, so it had probably been her. Well, she was sweating and her mouth felt dry, so it was probably pretty obvious she was thirsty. She sat there while sipping the cold water and let the two boys go on their merry way after the old witch magically fitted both of their robes. She stepped up to the pedestal and extended her arms to the side, like the boys had done before her. She really hoped she could get through this without having to explain her muteness to the witch.

The witch ended up being a chatty kind, but any question about the robes and her purchases in general she could answer with nods, shaking her head or shrugging. She ended up buying two pairs of school robes, and two common robes in a light green and yellow details, one of which she changed into immediately. When she walked out of the store with two bags only a few people looked at her funny and this time it was because of her looking like a red-eyed elf with white hair; seemed like she would have to get used to being stared at while in public, elves didn't seem to be that common, while they did seem to exist.

The robe-lady (she didn't bother memorising her name) had told her to get her wand and her trunk next, to store all her school equipment into. She told her that the trunk could be the kind that shrunk and stayed light no matter how much you put into it, so she'd definitely be getting one of those if she could afford one. She was pretty sure she could afford right about anything, but she still had to keep watch in her money; she wouldn't risk going back into the bank so soon.

The colours had become more vibrant and the way they shone hurt her eyes, but since no one else seemed to see them she tried not to seem bothered by them. Her thoughts had started to become erratic and distracted, but thanks to this she had come to the conclusion that what she saw was magic leaking out of enchanted items and going by this logic she just headed for the most colourful and bright storefront. Her assumption was proven to be correct when she found herself in the wand shop.

"Ah, Good day, good day! Oh my, it's been a while since I've had an elf as a customer. The last one was about a ten years back, hickory, 9 inches, unicorn horn core, perfect for enchantments and charms. I take it your here for your wand, miss?" A man from behind the counter shot out in a fast pace. The vibrant colourful light filling the store made it hard for Zuri to concentrate on the man and she just nodded her head. She could feel a headache coming on and she closed her eyes to spare her eyes from all the bright colours. "Put up your wand hand, miss."

She held out her right hand and could feel how the man measure the length and girth of her arm from many angles before putting something thin and light in it. She opened her eyes and saw a thin stick of wood on her hand. The wand shone in a vibrant blue, but it felt wrong in her hand and the man snatched it away and replaced it with another. She swung this one down and saw how the colours of the wand changed slightly, but then settled back into the misty green it had been. This one was snatched out of her hand as quickly and replaced with another shining in a slightly different colour. She started only shaking her wrist slightly, since that also disturbed the magic of the wand and closed her eyes as her temples started aching from the sensory overload. The shopkeeper still kept snatching away the wands and giving her new ones to try around. Zuri started to wonder if she should be doing something differently when the shopkeeper gave her a wand that felt like it jerked something out of her as she shook it.

Suddenly, Zuri could hear chirping and furious flapping of wings. When she opened her eyes, she noticed that the store was filled with a thick flock of tiny yellow birds. The birds flew around the store for a moment and then bustled out the door, causing some shoppers to dodge the wave of feathery bullets, but no one seemed too surprised by them; that's magic for you...

"Ah, a good wand, a very good wand; ivory, 9 inches, heartstring of a dragon!" Zuri flinched back as the shop owner jumped out from behind the counter like a jack in a box. Was there nothing that would discourage this guy? Was he also hyped up on amphetamine? Then again, if amphetamine could make wizards and witches see magic, then it would make sense, but a look into the man's mind told her he had come to possess this talent through hard work, rather than artificial stimulants. She warily handed the man the amount of gold and silver coins and found herself checking her pocket for her wand as she walked out the store. She had half expected for the man to snatch the wand away from her.

After a quick stop at the trunk shop (they were fully stocked for all the Hogwarts students) she had a trunk that shrunk down to look like a briefcase and wouldn't weigh more than one, if she didn't exceed the weight limit, which was 1000 kg. A look at what she actually needed for Hogwarts and she was quite sure that wouldn't happen, even if she were to buy more than enough personal items and accessories. She decided to at least buy her school supplies today and go window shopping tomorrow if she felt up to it. She was so hyper and the colours were so vibrant around her that she was scared of what the world would seem like when the amphetamine would wear off. The healer had been very clear on the addictive nature of the medicine and Zuri hoped she would have the mental fortitude to flush the amphetamine down the toilet when she arrived to Hogwarts and (supposedly) didn't need it anymore. She was gathering the books she needed for Hogwarts in the bookstore, when a girl with huge brown hair walked up to her.

"Excuse me, but do you happen to be an elf? I've read all I could find about you. Most of them were theories, of course, since no community of elves would allow a wizard to walk freely among them. The only first person records I could find were in _Encounters with mysterious magical civilisations _and _My wife's an elf and I love her, _but I think that last one was mostly fictional. A great read though, recommend it. Is it true you can talk to animals?" A girl with huge brown hair said in a speed that astonished even Zuri's hyperactive mind. The girl had only paused to draw her breath and was opening her mouth to blurt out another series of questions.

Without thinking about it too much, or at all, Zuri placed her hand on the girl's mouth. The girl mumbled a few words through her hand and her brows furrowed, but Zuri kept her calm and pulled down the collar of her robes and showed her the scars she had on her throat. They had nothing to do with her muteness, but if she showed them like this it would be a lot easier than explaining it through any other kind of body language. She then pulled her hand away and raised one finger at her, _one question at a time, please. _Then she motioned her to proceed with her babbling.

"Are you an elf?" The girl said after taking a deep breath. She was embarrassed by the way she had shot out her questions before in her excitement. The girl was a muggleborn and found anything to do with magic fascinating and wanted to understand how it worked.

Zuri shrugged and then pulled down a book she had been eying while in the bookstore, "_Muggles, how to hell do they work?" _and then tapped on the word "Muggles". The girl raised her eyebrows at this and Zuri waved her hand back and forth, _kind of, maybe, I don't know._

"Are you saying that you were raised by muggles? Were they the ones who..." The girl unconsciously touched her own neck, since the scars on her neck were the only ones Zuri'd shown this girl. "Nevermind. Can you converse with animals?"

Zuri didn't miss the fact that the girl had avoided saying "talk" but it was a good question, nonetheless. Was the ease she had in controlling magical creatures because of elves' natural affinity to conversing with animals? Well, she wasn't that sure if she should just blurt out her secrets to anyone she saw, but if this girl could find out about elves' ability to converse with animals, then there was no harm in confirming her suspicions. The mind reading thing she would keep close to her chest, no matter what. She simply nodded at the girl and found herself enjoying following this girl's overactive mind piecing together and trying to remember every possible thing she'd read about the subject. She seemed to have an extraordinarily detailed memory.

"Uhm... do you use a wand?" The girl asked, her mind still going through all she knew and had speculated to come up with another question. Zuri actually smiled at this and pulled out her ivory wand. She twirled it between her fingers and then put it back in the inner pocket of her robes. She then pulled out the folded out list of school supplies and handed it to the girl, knowing it would have been the next thing she asked. The girl's eyes widened and then she blushed crimson; she had presumed Zuri was a magical being, not a witch.

"You're a first- year, like me! Are you excited about learning witchcraft, or do you already know some of - Oh, muggles, yes, forgot about that, sorry. Well, are you excited about going to Hogwarts? I hear it's a big castle filled with secret passages and stairs that lead to a different places on each day of the week. I read it in the _History of Hogwarts _and sadly there weren't any kind of schedule for the stairs or tips about secret passages, so I fear I'll feel lost for a couple of days and I do hope not to be late for classes. Oh, what House do you hope to be in? I think Ravenclaw would be ideal, but Gryffindor isn't that bad of a choice, either. I couldn't really find that much about any famous Hufflepuffs, so I don't know how to react if I get sorted there, but I really hope I don't get sorted into Slytherin, they hate muggleborns, I hear. No book I read actually _said _that, but it was strongly hinted at that the more powerful families that get sorted there have that view, so same difference."

Dear god, how could have she said all that without taking a breath? Now the girl swayed on her feet and leaned herself on the bookcase they were standing in front of, so I guess she almost talked herself senseless. Zuri found herself laughing silently and actually had to wipe her eyes, since her vision was getting blurry from tears of joy. She could not make the sound associated with laughter, but it seemed that the act of laughing was instinctual and she still convulsed and acted like she was laughing if she was amused enough. The girl stared at her with surprise, but with an understanding gleam in her eyes. She knew Zuri was unable to produce sound, but presumed she had the memory of laughing that made her act this way. The girl with huge hair felt sorry for her and Zuri then found it rather easy to calm down again, she didn't want anyone's pity, but she didn't hold it against the girl. If she thought about it logically it was natural to feel empathy for her, but she still would like to not be put on a pedestal just because she had horrible things happen to her in the past. If she could keep her past a secret to the people around her, then she would.

"My name is Hermione Granger, by the way. Sorry for not introducing myself sooner, but I get carried away sometimes." Hermione Granger was blushing from embarrassment and offered a hand to her tentatively, asking herself if Zuri knew what the gesture meant as she did. Zuri grabbed the girl's hand and shook it firmly, alleviating Hermione's fears of a socially awkward situation. As soon as their hands touched Zuri could see an aura of coloured light around the girl. The light that swirled and blurred out the girl's features was a faint yellow, like a ray of sunshine in a dark dusty room, a library for example. Their hands parted and the light faded out into the surrounding air. Zuri also knew that it was customary to tell her own name, but her name wasn't printed on the supply list, so how was she supposed to tell this girl her name?

"Uhm, you can write your name, if you want, that is..." The girl said and offered Zuri the blank side of the supply list and a pen she had pulled out of the inner pocket of her jacket. Zuri took the paper and pen and after turning the device around for a second she clicked on the end and scribbled on the paper to see if it wrote. She wrote her name on the paper as it had been on the envelope with the supply list and enrolment letter, since that was the only instance she'd seen her name written in this world's letters. Zuri hadn't read the girl's mind too deep, but she was pretty sure she couldn't read her world's writing, though she'd seen it on the foreign books section.

"It's nice to meet you, Zuri Ling-Yao." Hermione Granger said and smiled at her, thinking her name was exotic. Zuri noted that the girl's teeth were sparkling white, though a little pronounced. Zuri pressed her palms together and bowed in a very stereotypically Asian way, according to Hermione's mind, that was. Hermione Granger thought it was amusing, but wasn't sure if she should find it as such or not. Zuri straightened from her bow with a smirk and Hermione let out a relieved laugh. Hermione Granger was a little on the talkative side, but some of Zuri's fears about going to Hogwarts were alleviated from meeting her.

"Hermione? Where'd you wander off to?" A woman with the same kind of huge hair said as she peeked between the bookcases, seemingly searching for Hermione. She noticed the two of them and started walking towards them "We can't afford more books, I told you that already. Oh, is this a friend of yours?"

"Mum, I was just looking! This is Zuri, she's a first-year at Hogwarts, like me." The woman's gaze was immediately drawn to her ears, after she was able to pry them out of her red eyes. Zuri had to wonder if the white hair and red eyes was an elf thing, since Hermione hadn't asked about them. Zuri bowed a little towards the woman, since that's what she had been taught to do, back when she couldn't control minds and had been taught etiquette.

"It's wonderful you're making friends, but your father's arms are getting tired, holding all of the books you had us buy. You can see your friend again on the train." The woman was a little freaked out by Zuri's red eyes, but was also genuinely happy that her daughter seemed to have made a friend. Zuri hadn't had the intention to pry into their matters, but their eye contact had lingered and she found out that in normal school Hermione had been shy and withdrawn. Zuri found that hard to believe after meeting the girl, but it could as well be true. It could have just been her mother's biased view on the matter, but Zuri felt uncomfortable to look any further into the matter.

"Bye, Zuri, see you on the train! I didn't get that much, Mum!" Hermione shouted and waved as she followed her mother out of the bookstore. Zuri waved back and then glanced back down into the list of supplies. She only needed to pay for the books she had collected and decide if she was to get a pet at all and she would be done with shopping for her school supplies. Good thing too, since her feet had started to hurt from walking and standing around, the burns on the soles of her feet playing quite a big part in that. She would have to see if there was an apothecary in Diagon Alley, since the healer had said she should change her bandages regularly. She had brought disinfected bandages and disinfectant from the hospital, but it would make sense to see if the magic world had a better alternative.

Zuri walked up to the counter and paid for the books she had piled on her "trunk" that now looked more like a suitcase with small wheels and an extendable handle coming off the side. She dropped the books into the enchanted space and had to smile at the "whoomp" sound it made when the books were either shrunken down, or the enchanted space stretched to accommodate them. She hadn't had the patience to ask the man at the trunk store which it was, but all that mattered was that it worked.

She had far exceeded the healer's suggested dosage of the pain relieving medicine, so Zuri decided to postpone deciding upon her familiar, as pets seemed to be called, for tomorrow and headed straight for the apothecary. She browsed for a while and found a few very useful products. Pain relieving ointment specifically developed for burns, self-wrapping bandages and footwear that seemed to be designed for people that had tried to impress their friends by walking on hot coals and burned their feet in the process. She found a couple more useful things and started thinking how she would use them in tandem with her muggle medicine. The store lady looked at her strangely for her purchases and the worry in her eyes made Zuri have the woman become strangely attracted porcupines. The pain was making her lash out already, so she should just get back to her room in the Leaky Cauldron and rest her aching feet and possibly try to get some sleep, as soon as the amphetamine wore off.

Dragging her trunk up the stairs would have been a pain, if there hadn't been a conveyer belt on the side of the stairs that she could send her trunk up in. Again, Zuri had to wonder if the conveyer belt only existed if the shopper had a trunk, or if she hadn't noticed on her way down. She dragged her trunk through the Leaky Cauldron, throwing some of the golden coins the barkeeps way on her way to her room. She set her trunk down the moment she closed the door and then threw herself on the bed. She peeled herself out of her robes and started to gingerly take of her old bandages. The ones close to the skin were actually painful to remove and the disinfectant was so much worse, but the self-wrapping bandages gave her a breather as they wrapped themselves tightly, yet not constricting any of her movements. There must have been a spell on them to make them so comfortable.

She fell on the bed as the bandages set themselves on her body, it was soft and comforting, but it still took her more than half an hour to fall asleep, with all the colours and magic swirling around her. She didn't want to know what the world would look like without all the pretty colours, but still she knew that she shouldn't depend on the amphetamine to keep her going. It had been a necessity for today, but as soon as she got to Hogwarts, down the drain they go!

She would meet Hermione Granger again on the train, which was only two days away, but she still dreamed of a blind girl throwing rocks at people. She wanted to get back, she wanted to live, she wanted to know Toph Bei Fong in any way she could and she was sure to find a way to do that within this world. She had crossed over one way, so it must have been possible to go back, as well.

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><p><strong>Well, that was long... Well, I kind of had to cut it off somewhere, since I couldn't find a suitable spot to actually stop it, I just decided to cut some corners and have her pass out in the end, but then again... fuck it.<strong>

**Read and review, I guess.**

**Crazy Laughter**


	3. Slytherin

**Oh, it's a doozy... READ IT! TWILIGHT SPARKLE COMMANDS YOU! Brony and proud of it!  
><strong>

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><p><strong>Chapter 3<strong>

**Slytherin**

Harry's life had been turned upside down. He had thought himself to be a freak, an outcast from society for reasons he didn't know and in a way that was true, but he had never thought there could be another world where he would actually fit in. He was terrified and overjoyed at the same time. The only "wizard" he knew was Hagrid and he had met that stuck up boy in the robe shop. There had been an uneasy "holier than thou" feel coming from him that reminded Harry too much of the way uncle Vernon looked at him and beggars on the street.

Oh, right, there had been an elf, as well. He hadn't talked with the girl, but she had seemed interesting just from the way she looked. Maybe the fact that she went into Madam Malkin's meant she was a student at Hogwarts? If that were the case, then was the girl like him? Living with muggles and picked on because of the way she looked before the enrolment letter to Hogwarts arrived? Maybe there were people that understood his situation in the wizarding world, after all... If that were the case, then he would meet her on the train. He would at least try and say hi, if the opportunity presented itself.

He was going to a school with an elf, possibly. How cool was that? Dudley can shove his fancy muggle private school were the sun doesn't – Now, why was he thinking about the Dursleys?

"I'm a wizard!" Harry shouted and immediately regretted making a fool out of himself. He was alone in his room at the Leaky Cauldron, but someone might have heard him nonetheless. He sat up in his bed and listened for any signs of someone hearing him. He didn't hear any pause in the chatter from downstairs or a banging on the wall urging him shut up, so he reckoned his spur of idiocy had gone unnoticed. It wasn't that late yet and he didn't have to wake up early to make breakfast for anybody, so he didn't have to go to bed yet, but he did feel drowsy from all the activity he'd had that day. Having the very principles of your life turned upside down was a rather tiring experience.

Still, the only thing he'd had to eat that day was the ice-cream sundae Hagrid had offered him, so he should go downstairs and see if he could get something more substantial to eat. He grabbed a few silver coins from his money pouch and then locked it back into his trunk. He had quite an amount of money with him right now and he wasn't going to go and wave around a full pouch of money downstairs. The pouch itself was enchanted, so there was more in it than he could fit in his pockets, but he reckoned he should take some money with him to the train. It was a train filled with children, so they'd probably be selling assorted sweets and such.

"I'm just going downstairs to eat, I'll be back." Harry said to his sleeping owl. He should really find a name for her soon. He had been reading the history of magic textbook just for that reason, since it was filled with dates and names of famous wizards and magical places and creatures. He had a couple of suggestions for the name already, but had yet to come to a decision. The owl gave a low hoot and an annoyed ruffle of feathers and went back to sleep. Okay, owls are nocturnal, cranky in the day...

Harry stepped out of the room and made his way down to the bar and asked the barkeep for some food, preferably not moving or sentient. What he got was a burger that was beyond greasy with a side of delicious and crispy French fries. He kind of felt like Dudley when eating the serving, but it was so good he didn't care. He _never _got to eat something likethis with the Dursleys. Not that he wanted to end up like Dudley, but indulging on something once in a while couldn't hurt... If Uncle Vernon didn't find out, that was. Harry had to wonder if there was a way around the ministry's ban on underage magic, since turning Uncle Vernon into a frog was tempting beyond belief.

Harry finished his food and pushed the plate away, resisting the urge to try and get up and clean the dishes. He got up from the table he had been sitting on and started up for his room. Now that he had some decent food in his stomach the stress of the day was really weighing down his eyelids. He walked up the stairs without anyone stopping him and shaking his hand and started reading the numbers from the doors to find his own. He was too tired to remember the way back. He was two numbers away from his own room when he came upon an open door. Well, it was not open, per say, more slightly ajar.

Harry was sleepy and his whole day had been filled with surprise after surprise, so that might have been the reason why his imagination immediately imagined a scene of a brutal murder to be behind the slightly ajar door. He hadn't seen many scary movies in his life, but he at least knew that there was always a murderer or something scary behind a slightly ajar door. Eventually curiosity won over reason and he peeked inside the room.

He saw a black leather trunk lying on its side on the floor and light green robes on and around it. There were brown backs and a package of shoes of some kind; along with bottles of tonics and salves from the apothecary on Diagon alley (Harry remembered seeing the symbol on the brown bags). There was also a childish backpack lying close to the bed with something that looked like a prescription bottle peeking out of it. He noticed the piles of bandages around the bed before his eyes fell on the figure on the bed.

It might have been the white sheets and the clean white bandages the girl had wrapped around her body, along with the girl's pale complexion and white hair that made the girl be the last thing Harry noticed about the room, but as soon as he recognized the small frame on the bed he pulled his head out of the room and blushed furiously. It was the elf girl he'd seen in the bar downstairs and on Diagon Alley, so she was really staying in the Leaky Cauldron as well. It had only been a glance, but he had seen the bandages around the girl's body. Now that he thought about it, he wasn't sure if the girl was wearing anything else at all.

His blush deepened to the point he started to suspect the blood was oozing through his skin and he darted to his own room. He opened the door and slammed it shut behind him. He stood there, with his owl giving him a disgruntled look for waking it. He stood there for another minute before sneaking back into the hall and closing the girl's door as quietly as possible. He really didn't want the girl to wake up and give him an earful about peeking into a girl's room. Plus, there were some shady characters drinking ale downstairs and she had her door open. Harry snuck back into his room and crashed down on the bed.

Suddenly, he wasn't tired at all. Well, at least he now had time to come up for a name for his owl...

**Zuri**

"_She – She took you over, just like she did Sokka. It wasn't you, it was all her fault. We never should have saved her..."_

"_Oh, you would have liked for me to walk off of a cliff, then? I say we didn't really have a choice in the matter. We couldn't have known she was some monster, she looked like a victim, but now we know why she was in that base."_

"_STOP IT!"_

"_To- Toph, what the hell? You can't be saying you agree with what she did."_

"_Of course I don't. Committing mass murder is not something I'm a fan of, you know, but I at least try to understand why she did it, rather than just label her as a monster. Can you honestly say you wouldn't have done something like that if put in her position?"_

"_Why are you defending her, Toph? She used us just to get her revenge!"_

"_She was dying, afraid and angry. She didn't want them to get away with what had been done to her!"_

"_She didn't need to use Aang for that!"_

"_She had no choice! She couldn't move on her own! Aang is the most powerful out of us, so he was the natural choice."_

I'm sorry.

"_Did you guys hear something just now?"_

Zuri's eyes shot open and she saw the room she had rented in the tavern. She had paid for the room, so the initial way she got it didn't really matter, in her opinion. She thought she had dreamed about Toph and the avatar in the aftermath of what she had done, but wasn't sure if it was just a dream, or if she still had a way of reaching out to them. She forced herself up to a sitting position and the burns on her joints made it hard. The pain medication had started to wear off and if she didn't take more soon, then she'd be practically immobilized. She reached over to the bag with her medication and unused muggle bandages and popped the cork off the bottle for the pain medication. She shook a couple on her palm and was able to swallow them without water by knocking her head back.

She sat there on the bed, trying to stay still as possible, waiting for the medicine to dull the pain enough for her to move. She blinked and couldn't get rid of the feeling that there were scales on her eyes and she realised that the colours of magic had nearly disappeared and she actually felt drowsy. She had just woken up, so that should pass in its own time. She should try and avoid using the amphetamines if she could function without them. The healer had been adamant on the addictive nature of the medicines he'd given her.

She should go back out into Diagon Alley to get her familiar. From what she'd heard and rea,d then an owl would be the most practical choice, but if she found some animal that she could hold a conversation with, then that was another matter. She should practice the whole mind-control thing with animals, since it could give her a competitive edge, if need be. And it had less chances of backfiring, since animals were unpredictable to some degree, no matter how well trained.

The world was so void of colour now. Everything seemed grey and lifeless without colours swirling around and singing to her. The pain medication had not kicked in yet, so when she started contemplating how lifeless the world seemed to be the burns around her body started aching and reminded her just how lonely she was in this world. It had been miraculously lucky that she had been able to get money and medicine to help her burns in such a short amount of time. Then again, she had made herself a criminal in this world on her first outing without a second thought and it was not at all certain there were no records of her accessing the Black vault. The law keepers of this world could burst in and haul her to some dark and lonely cell any moment.

If that could be avoided for another day, then she would be going to Hogwarts, along with Hermione Granger. She had picked up on the location of station 9 and ¾ from Hermione Granger's mind, among others, but she was still hesitant in running into a wall. She tried her hardest to keep thinking about the mechanics of station 9 and ¾ and flexed her right leg carefully. There was still the constant dull pain, but it had faded enough already for her to move, albeit carefully. She would wait ten minutes and then take one pill more if the pain didn't go away. She didn't want to go in Diagon alley cranky and prone to lash out.

She picked up her green robes off the floor and checked them over for dust, or other kind of stains. She didn't really have anything else to wear and she didn't really care, but maybe she should get some "muggle" clothes while she was out. They should sell them somewhere in Diagon alley and maybe a hat to hide her ears. It would have to be a big hat, but she didn't mind looking somewhat eccentric if it meant abiding by the rules. Well, now that the pain was more or less gone she realised she was starving. The effects of amphetamine included loss of appetite, so she really should eat something now.

She walked out the room with some of the silver and gold coins in her pockets, along with the change she got from her shopping yesterday and with her medication as well. She didn't think she would need to take amphetamines or pain killers, but it was better safe than sorry. She still had to go back and grab her wand. She would have to get used to carrying it around with her at all times, since witches seemed to use it for pretty much anything. When she got down the stairs and to the bar her legs were giving out under her from the hunger. She wasn't sure when the last time she ate was, but she would have to eat now. Luckily, there was a menu on the side of the bar she could point to and order what she wanted. She picked one out of random since reading their letters was still hard and found herself eating small sticks of potato and a meat patty between bread with random vegetables thrown in. It was delicious, but frankly she started tasting what she ate halfway through. Hunger does funny things to ones manners.

She paid for her food and opened the wall behind the bar with her own wand. She still felt a small nudge when the wall was activated, but it was a mere shadow to what she had felt when picking out her wand. She had to wonder if feeling it was normal or not, but that would have to be addressed in Hogwarts, if need be. The street was just as crowded as it had been yesterday with students and their parents buying supplies. The muggleborns stood out like sore thumbs and the general idea seemed to be to ignore them altogether. Diagon Alley must have been setup in a way that someone without magic couldn't get in, so at least one of them must have had business there and Zuri guessed it was the small girl with wonder in her eyes. Zuri didn't mind the amazed look the girl gave her, but still felt flustered about the attention and tried not to pay it any mind.

Walking into the owlery was a bewildering experience, since even without eye contact she could "hear" the owls' reactions to seeing her. There were some that had seen her kind and recognised her as such and some just thought of her as another witch. It was strange having the thoughts of animals in her head, but the owls seemed a little too bright to be birds to begin with. Zuri had to presume it had something to do with magic. She started looking through all the owls that were staring at her and quickly noticed that they all had different personalities and some even turned their head away when their eyes met. Some of the owls didn't even want her as their owner, it seemed. She had to wonder if normal witches and wizards realised this, or if they were treated only as birds.

She stopped in front of a relatively small owl with deep amber eyes and black feather formations right above its eyes that made it look like it was glaring at her angrily. A look into the mind of the small bird revealed that it was really trying to intimidate her by accenting those "eyebrows" by making the rest of its body seem smaller and leaning towards her. It wasn't like it didn't want to be her familiar, it was just that it hated the children that came to only pet it and look at it, nut still left him there with the other owls. Zuri didn't think a bird could be socially awkward, but there it was. She reached out and patted the owl on the head, but then decided to at least see over the other owls before deciding. The owl gave an annoyed hoot as she walked away.

Two minutes later Zuri walked out with the socially awkward owl in a cage. It looked excited as its head was turning every which way and it hooted at anything even slightly interesting. As for what it was "thinking", it was like listening to a two year old in a candy store, on a sugar high. She would try and think of a name for the owl, as it was part of the process in which familiars branded to their owners. She had only listened and pried into the minds of the owls in the owlery and decided she should at least try and convey a message to the small owl.

_Do you have a name?_

The owl's head snapped toward Zuri and it let out a long, stretched out hoot. Zuri couldn't help but presume that the owl did it just to show her its amazement, since she doubted it was instinctual for owls to react in that way.

_Oh, get over it! If you don't have a name, then do you have any preferences on what I should choose? Don't worry, I can see into your mind._

The owl turned its head away and actually seemed to be thinking about the question for a second before ruffling its feathers and giving a short hoot. _Whatever, you decide, _was what Zuri interpreted it to mean, but it was still hard to name an owl. Really, where should she start looking for ideas? Naming it after some historical figure of this world seemed shallow and inpersonal... so maybe something from her world?

Let's see, the owl seemed to be male and was pretty intelligent, but also anti-social and awkward...

A few hours later Zuri and Zuko were testing out the range and effects of Zuri's power to convey her thoughts to animals. From what Zuri was able to "hear" the owl appeared of his name and didn't mind when Zuri told him that he was named after royalty. The range in which Zuko could "hear" her exceeded 100 meters, but was less than 120 meters under the conditions she was under now. If her pain medication, or other variables played into it would have to be researched later, but Zuri was pleased with the results of their half an hour of research. Zuko was glad to help and also enjoyed sitting on the arm rest of the chair Zuri was sitting while reading her Spells book. The owl was drowsing off as the day passed them by and then excused himself as night fell, reassuring Zuri he'd come back in time in the morning.

Familiars were more than pets, they were companions and the bond between a person with magic and their familiar drastically prolonged the familiar's life and gave it an ability to find their master at any given time, at least according to everything Zuri had been able to get her hands on. Right at that moment she just liked the energetic way the owls mind moved and how soft his feathers were.

After finding out that the Ministry was keeping tabs on underage magic Zuri decided to leave the spell books for later and started reading her herbology and Potions textbooks. After an hour or so she had a headache and was very grateful about getting a dictionary. Potions seemed exceedingly complex and some of the words were just foreign to her, so she had a feeling that she'd be having most difficulty in that subject. And there was the fact that they used cauldrons and fire to heat it, so she had her doubts about how she'd react to that. She'd feel anxious at least, around all that fire, but it was controlled and it wasn't like they were shooting it out of their palms... at least she didn't think so...

Research! More research was in order!

What woke her was an annoyed sounding hoot by her ear and a sharp pain on the same ear. She jerked awake and immediately regretted it as the burns on her joints and back flared into a cacophony of sickening pain. She fell back on the chair, her teeth clenching to keep in the screams that would never come. Zuko hooted in alarm and flew around the room in a near panic at seeing his master in such pain from something he did. It took a minute for Zuri to concentrate enough to tell it to calm down and bring her the bottle of pain medicine from the bedside table. The owl realized what she meant and set the prescription bottle on her lap, while staying on the arm rest of the chair, hooting in soft tones, with obvious worry in his eyes.

Her pain medication was an opiate and strong enough to be dangerous, so there was a child-proof cap on the bottle and it was hard opening the bottle with her aching and shaking hands, but she was able to screw it off, with only a few scattering on her lap and on the floor. She shook out three pills and knocked them down her throat. She was thirsty beyond belief, but she was able to swallow the pills nonetheless. She would have to drink some water as soon as the medication took hold. It was not like she would get a headache with all the pain medications in her system, but she still needed to stay hydrated.

After fifteen minutes the medication was taking effect and she felt like she could move. She leaned forward and glanced at the clock on the bedside table. Zuko had knocked it over, but she could still read the time. It was 8:09 and the train was leaving at King's cross at nine. Okay, she was not as late as she had thought, but she still had to hurry. She took off the robes she had slept in and used her wand to unwrap the bandages around her body. They were said to be the kind that kept the wound clean with magic, but she needed a shower, or at least to wash her hair. She wanted to look somewhat presentable when getting on the train.

She hated, hated and once again HATED having such long hair and the burns around her body didn't help either, but she was more infuriated with her hair at the moment. She had showered, she had washed her body gingerly and then had started to wash her hair, with Zuko there watching the time for her as she kept her eyes closed from the detergent. The process should have been quicker with this world's "shampoo", but Zuko hooted the five minute mark as she was only rubbing the stuff in her scalp. Then she started hurrying and nearly fell down in the shower, but was still able to hit her head on the wall as she stumbled for balance. She washed the detergent out of her hair and then tried to dry her hair as well as possible before using the one towel in the bathroom, but it still left her hair damp and clinging to her head.

She had packed and rushed down into the bub. She knew how to get to King's cross and she had double-checked she had everything with her, but then realized she had put on her wizard's robes. There was no time to change, so she threw the key to the barkeep and rushed out the door. She jutted out her wand and a purple bus screeched to a stop in front of her. She stepped in and was delighted to see there was a map there where she could point her destination out. She paid the man and sat down on a chair

So, now she was standing in front of a pillar between platforms 9 and 10. She was sure it was that platform, but the minds she had skimmed were so accustomed to using it that there had been no details if she needed a pass or if she just walked through it. Would the ticket be enough, or did she have to run, or just walk briskly? How in the...

Oh, it's that famous kid from before. He seemed even more lost than she did and she actually watched the boy ask a person she presumed to be a muggle about the station. The man promptly laughed at the boy and left him looking defeated there on the platform. The boy took one more desperate glance around and their eyes met. The spark of lingering hope in the boy's eyes drove away the thought of ignoring the boy and she waved him over to where she was.

"Good day, it's nice to meet you. I am so glad there's someone else here that's... like me..." The boy was about to ask her how to get to platform nine and three quarters but his shyness took over and he diverted his eyes. He was thinking how rude it was that he hadn't introduced himself first and something about an open door Zuri couldn't quite make sense of. "My name is Harry Potter, nice to meet you."

Zuri nodded and then pulled out a note pad and a thick marker she had bought on the same trip she found her owl. She gave Harry Potter a slip of paper with her name written on it and that said she was a mute. Harry Potter wasn't quite sure if he should say he was sorry, or not and Zuri found it amusing. Zuri decided to let the boy off the hook on this socially awkward situation and started writing on another piece of paper.

"We can get into 9 3/4 through here, but I'm not sure how. I am going to see if someone goes in before me." Zuri wrote and showed to the boy to read. He nodded and turned to the pillar in amazement. Zuri could hear him making sense of the 9 and three quarters, since there were four pillars between the stations and you could get into this one through the third one you walked past when coming in from the street. Zuri walked away from the pillar and then sat down on her trunk, with Zuko in his cage at her feet. The owl was nodding off and barely conscious, but still let out a hoot to make her hurry up and not miss the train.

It didn't take long for a herd of gingers to amass at the pillar in question and after some kind of family argument, the children with luggage rushed into the pillar one at a time, with one red-headed girl left behind on the platform with her mother. Zuri picked up Zuko's cage and walked towards the red-headed woman and the small girl at her side. The woman turned towards her in mid-step and stopped as she saw Harry tailing behind her. Zuri bowed and stepped to the side to let Harry do the talking, if it was necessary.

"Uh... Good day, my name's Harry Potter and... We were just wondering how do we get to platform 9 3/4 and you seem to know, so..." Harry stammered out, the image of shyness and social awkwardness. At least he made an effort to be polite and it did seem that the woman recognized his name. So, the kid really was some kind of celebrity then...

"Oh, you poor dears! You just have to go through this pillar. Don't worry, we'll walk you in, the first time is always the hardest, walking into a wall and all..." The woman was the epitome of motherly fuzziness and the small redheaded girl clinging to her rolled her eyes. The girl was small, freckled and innocent in the way only children were able to be. If people's minds were like pictures, then this girl was just a calming picture of a sky with clouds drifting through it, before life made you focus on everything crawling and hunting on the surface.

It was easy to let the mother and redheaded girl forget about her, since she was dressed like a witch and had been the one to approach them. Zuri let the Mother and Harry Potter go through the pillar first and seeing that the Harry Potter kid was in a situation similar to hers, it was just as simple as walking through the pillar. To her surprise the small girl with freckles was standing next to her, staring at her with an amazed look on her face. Zuri turned to the girl and raised an eyebrow in confusion. A girl of her age should be clinging to her mother in a situation like this.

"Uh, it's your first time going through, right? The trick is not to stop or hesitate; I can walk you through, if you want." The girl said, with bravado only children can muster over such seemingly trivial things. It was amusing and it was true that Zuri was hesitant on walking into a wall, so she handed Zuko's cage to the girl and grabbed the hand she offered and they walked into platform 9 and ¾ without any problem.

It was five till nine and the platform was mostly filled with parents wanting to wave their children good bye at this point. The girl with red hair and freckles walked straight to her mother and Zuri followed, since the girl still had her owl, even though she wanted to get on the train already. Seeming the harry potter kid had already boarded the train and the Mother was fuzzing over another ginger-headed child. The small girl tugged on the hem of her dress to get her attention.

"Mum, I helped the elf through the gate." The girl said, obviously looking for compliments from doing such a tremendous task of goodwill. She could just hand Zuri her owl back, but she had no real way of conveying that without seeming rude. Then again, calling her just "elf" was like calling the girl "ginger" in return, so it was at least a little rude. The girl was still a kid though, so that much was forgiven.

"Oh my, I'm so sorry about forgetting you like that, dearie." The woman cooed out as she patted the girl's head as a compliment, then suggesting Ginny to give the owl back to the nice elf girl. As soon as Zuri got her owl back she rushed into the train, but with all the students already boarded, it seemed hard to actually find a place to sit. Well, there were open seats, but she really disliked sitting with strangers and having to explain her muteness again. She eventually found a compartment with only the Harry Potter kid from before in it and felt somewhat more comfortable opening the door, she had explained her muteness to the kid already after all, so there was that. She felt like looking for Hermione Granger, but her feet were killing her and Zuko didn't like all the commotion.

"Oh, hello again. I don't think any of the seats are taken, you can sit wherever." Harry Potter said, visibly tensing up on the prospect of social interaction. He was still thinking about some open door and it seemed to be the root of his discomfort. Zuri gave Harry a court nod and then sat down on the seat opposite to him. After a minute of just staring out of the window she decided to pull out her schoolbooks and try to make sense of the mechanics of Potions. She had a feeling she should use the Herbology book as a reference to even begin to understand it. Harry seemed relieved by the fact she had something to occupy her time with, since he had no idea what he should talk about.

"Are these seats taken? Everywhere else is full." The youngest boy out of the herd of gingers she'd seen on the station poked his head in. Harry glanced at her and she gave a discreet nod without raising her eyes from the Herbology book. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence as the ginger boy stared at Harry.

"You're him, right? Harry Potter, the-boy-who-lived?" The ginger asked and Zuri gave him a disbelieving glance. Could someone really be so rude as to just ask something like that out of the blue, even before introducing themselves? Seemingly... Zuri turned the page and focused back on her book. "Do you have the scar? Can I see?"

He is not some animal put up on display, you condescending brat! Zuri found herself pondering about the weight of the book she was holding and the damage she could inflict with it.

Harry Potter, seemingly the-boy-who-lived, pulled back his bangs and showed a lightning shaped scar on his forehead. There was no reason to defend the boy if he was such a pushover... Zuri felt drained. The words in the book started to look like gibberish and her eyelids felt heavy.

"Well, hello there, Ron!" Another ginger shouted out as he opened the compartment door and caused Zuri to jump.

"And good day to you, Harry. Ron's been playing nice, I presume." The other one out of the seemingly identical twins said.

"There will be consequences if you haven't, Ronald."

"And who is your friend here with pointy ears?" The first one said and Zuri raised her head out of the book to look at the twins. Bits of information and their foremost thoughts flooded into her mind instantly. At least her power was more manageable than when in her own world, but she still knew things she shouldn't and felt a twinge of guilt about it.

"Oh my, she's got cool eyes and could the ears mean that she is an elf?"

"Do you know what this means, George?"

"Just think of the possibilities, Fred. That is, if it is true you can converse with animals, or if you are an elf and not simply hexed by, say, a disgruntled sibling?" The one that was just called George said, but Zuri was certain he was actually Fred. Seemed like the two of them liked to keep people on their toes by making people uncertain as to which one of the duo they were dealing with. Also, it was fairly obvious the twins were infamous pranksters and were already thinking of ways to use her way with animals for the amusement of others. Their minds were livid and creative in spite of their fool hardy disposition and Zuri wouldn't mind assisting them in a number of their endeavours. She gave them a nod and was happy to see that they interpreted it successfully and she didn't have to go into further detail.

"Well, as pleasantly surprising this has been, Lee's got a giant tarantula that we'd like to see before Filch confiscates it at Hogwarts." Fred said and retreated out of the compartment along with his identical twin. Ron was thinking about what Harry would think about him when compared to his brothers and Harry was just dumbstruck by the talkative duo. Zuri couldn't say she was feeling anything of the sort, since she felt like falling asleep on the spot. Just as her eyes were closing and her mind slipping the door of the compartment slid open and she heard a familiar voice.

"Have any of you seen a – ah, Zuri!" Hermione Granger said right after sliding the compartment door open and Zuri could hear her stepping further into the compartment and forced her eyes to open back up. The girl's hair was as big as ever and Zuri could read tension and overall nervousness in her eyes even without peeking into her mind. This nervousness seemed to come off as an snotty attitude towards people. Well, taking her vast knowledge it was only natural that it would be the thing she'd rely on to overcome her shyness...

"Zuri, I'm sorry about asking this out of the blue like this, but could you help us find Neville's toad? He's worried sick and blames himself." It took Zuri a couple of seconds to understand what she said and it was hard to focus on her face. Her eyes were burning and she wanted to sleep, but she didn't want to go to sleep now. She had slept a full night by her own estimate and she should be able to stay awake until they got to the school, but when she felt this sleepy...

Zuri nodded at Hermione's request and reached for her trunk as the ginger kid shot out a remark about how toads were such lame familiars and even he would have liked to have an owl if he could afford one. Zuri rummaged through her belongings and then took one pill out of one of the prescription bottles the doctor had given her and then swallowed it down with a sip out of a bottle of water she had packed with her before. She then closed the trunk and pushed it back under her seat while laying back on her seat.

"Uhm, could you just _call _to his toad, or is that impossible? I'm not sure how it is that – I mean, there was nothing about the mechanics of what you do in anything I read and it might have been rude of me to just presume –" Again, Zuri reached out a hand towards the girl to stop her from babbling, but from her fatigue her hand didn't quite hit its mark like before and she ended up poking Hermione Granger in the nose. Well, it worked out all the same as Hermione stopped her babble from the surprise and looked her in the eyes. It would take a while for the stimulant she just swallowed to take effect, but she could at least try what Hermione had suggested while waiting for that to happen.

"H- His name is Trevor, the toad's I mean." The clumsy looking boy whose toad was missing commented. Rationalising that she would need a name to call if it was like shouting out loud. Of course, it wasn't but, if the toad was the boy's familiar, then it would label its own existence with that name and calling out that name would cause a reaction she could "hear". It shouldn't matter if the mind being called was as simple as that of a toad's.

_Trevor, oh, Trevor, where art thou?_

Zuri closed her eyes and focused on listening for some unspoken reaction to that name. There was indeed something for a moment, but then it faded and Zuri only had a general direction where a Trevor _could _be. Zuri rummaged through the inside of her robes without opening her eyes and pulled out the notepad and marker she had used to communicate with Harry Potter. It was a clumsy way of communicating, but relying on body language was even clumsier.

"Trevor is somewhere further down the train. Follow me." As Zuri passed this note to Hermione she put the notepad back in her robes and stood up from her seat, her legs feeling as though they were made out of lead and the world constantly going in and out of focus, but she still managed to walk out of the compartment without stumbling. Why was she so tired all of a sudden? Should she really have taken that stimulant if this wasn't natural fatigue after all? Zuri walked to the train cart next to the one where her compartment was and concentrated on sending out a telepathic message again.

_Trevor, the toad and saviour, do come out! Trevor!_

Again she felt the sudden increase in what she could only call white noise and now could pinpoint it more accurately. There were no words to a toad's mind and she couldn't even get clear images or sounds without eye contact, so it was only noise on her end, but she could still hear it. Trevor seemed to be in one of the two compartments to her right. She opened the door to the first one and kneeled down on the floor. Judging by how low she had sensed Trevor, he was probably hiding under someone's seat. She didn't see Trevor under the seats in this compartment, but the people in it were more interested in her ears and red eyes than asking why she was checking under their seats. Zuri ignored them and tried to tune them out and send another call to Trevor.

_Trevor._

The toad was in the compartment next to the one she was in, right next to the door, on her right when she went in the door. Smiling a little at the Quick success of the task Hermione and the clumsy boy would have spent the whole of the train ride doing Zuri walked in the next compartment and then reached a hand between the legs of a girl a few grades above her, reaching for Trevor hiding under her seat.

"Hey, what do you – AAIE!" The girl shouted as Zuri pulled a large toad from under her seat. It might have been the surprise, or just the fact the girl didn't like toads, but the other people in the compartment burst out laughing at the girl climbing up on her seat and trying to get away from Trevor. Zuri ignored them and turn towards Hermione and the clumsy boy standing behind her. The boy looked awestruck and happy and the smile on Hermione's face told Zuri, even without reading her mind, that she was proud that it had been _her _acquaintance that resolved the issue so quickly.

"Trevor! Oh, thank you so much for finding him. I thought I lost him for good this time." The boy gushed with gratefulness as he took the toad from Zuri. Glancing at the frog told Zuri that the frog thought of it as a game and didn't know that its master worried about its welfare to such extent. She felt a little more awake now and faint flows of colour had started to dance around the edges of her vision, but she still felt too fatigued to inform the toad of this fact. It was not her place to meddle in such things anyways. Zuri simply nodded her head, hoping to dismiss the matter with that and Neville did go on his merry way after thanking her earnestly yet again, worried if he could find his way back to his belongings.

"You were amazing, Zuri!" Hermione exclaimed as Neville was out of earshot and they had closed the door to the compartment with the now traumatized girl. "Did you call for Trevor when you closed your eyes back when you were sitting down? Does it work like telepathy, I mean; do you transfer your thoughts to animals, or is it some kind of magical ability? Could I learn how to do it? I don't have a familiar yet, but being able to talk to them would be..." Hermione trailed off and bowed her head with her cheeks turning crimson. They walked into the cart with her compartment without Hermione saying anything and Zuri pulled out her notepad. She was writing another note when Hermione spoke again.

"I'm sorry for getting carried away like that, again. I'm not sure what's the reason, but I talk too much when I'm –" Zuri handed her a note she'd written while she scrambled to apologize for the trait in her personality Zuri found most endearing. The note said "Fetch your belongings; I would like to sit with you for the rest of the ride."

It was bold and possibly rude of her to make such a statement, but it was the truth and she didn't have the means to subtly hint at it, nor the will to find a way to do so. To Zuri's everlasting relief Hermione smiled at the note and told her to wait for her as she fetched her trunk. As her feet were still feeling sore from all her activity she walked back into the compartment and sat down. Ronald the ginger and Harry suddenly stopped talking when she opened the door, but Zuri couldn't really bring herself to care if they had been talking about her. Hermione Granger had found her on the train and was going to spend the rest of the ride with her. Just from the tidpits of information she'd picked out from her mind she was certain Hermione had a lot to talk about and inform her off and she found nothing wrong with using the rest of the train doing just that. Listening to the girl speak and seeing how her extraordinary mind categorized and associated all the information she was talking about was more efficient than reading any book herself.

"So, you people really can talk to animals? My dad said it was just a myth, but I guess you can't argue with the real thing, huh?" The rude ginger with the name of Ronald Weasley said to her and Zuri had the not so sudden urge to hurt the freckled child. He meant well and his rudeness was in no way intentional, but that didn't change the fact that he _was _rude and Zuri had no obligation to ignore it. Zuri simply nodded to the ginger without making eye contact and turned her eyes to look outside the window. The train was probably enchanted in some way or other, since she could see a thin membrane of colour fluttering in the wind the train created, just outside the window. She could see the colours and felt completely awake now. The danger of falling asleep on Hermione Granger babbling on about things was gone, but she couldn't help but feel that her mind was still a little... rattled.

Hermione Granger walked into the compartment just as Zuri was starting to ponder if her earlier fatigue had been because of her misinformed use of powerful pain medicine. She introduced herself to Harry and Ron and the two of them introduced themselves to her. There was a bit of small talk until Hermione mentioned the Houses.

"So, which House do you want to be sorted into? I wish I'm in Ravenclaw, but Gryffindor wouldn't be bad either, though I don't think I have the qualifications for them. I don't know about Hufflepuff, but definitely not Slytherin... I heard stories." Hermione said, visibly trying to stop herself from babbling about the houses like she had done with Zuri. Zuri turned to Ronald, the annoying, and Harry, genuinely interested to see their answers.

"My whole family's been in Gryffindor. All my brothers and my folks too, I guess they'd be disappointed if I broke the family tradition. Well, if I do get sorted into somewhere else, I hope not Slytherin, rotten eggs the lot of them." Ronald said in his everlasting wisdom. And how does Ronald the omnipotent know this about the Slytherins? From his all Gryffindor family must have a _real_ unbiased view of their rival house... She was getting too caught up by this, but she couldn't help feeling aggravated.

"I guess –" Harry never got a chance to be indecisive about his answer as their compartment door was opened by a certain ferret faced boy with silvery hair, not as silvery as hers, but very blonde nonetheless.

"Well, well, so you were Potter after all. I didn't recognize you in the dress shop with your hair in the way." He bought a dress? Zuri knew this was not the case, but still passed a note to Hermione pointing out this possible misinterpretation of the boy's words. Hermione barely stifled a giggle and earned a glare full of contempt from the blonde in front of them. "My name is Draco Malfoy and these two are Grabbe and Goyle. I urge you to reconsider your choice in friends. Having the _right _friends makes all the difference between greatness and mediocrity."

Wow, that sounded rehearsed, like he'd been standing outside the door practicing that with the two goons he'd brought with him as his audience. Actually, if Zuri didn't know better that sounded very plausible... Maybe this kid had been going around giving this speech to any and all compartments with first years in them. Again, Zuri let Hermione know of this possibility, but she only stifled a small chuckle. The joke wasn't as successful as the first one and now Zuri was starting to think she shouldn't try too hard as to not seem desperate.

"So, what do you say, Harry Potter. Come with me and you can have the right friends that will launch you to greatness." Draco Malfoy said and offered a hand to Harry. The audacity of this boy and the unfounded confidence he carried himself could only mean a noble upbringing, being told he was born better than others made for some insufferable personas.

"I think I'm fine, thank you." Harry Potter said coldly and Draco Malfoy actually look shocked at this. Zuri couldn't help but smile at this, but Draco Malfoy caught a glimpse of that and turned to her in anger.

"And what's so funny, knife-ears?" Draco Malfoy said, the word "knife-ears" in a way that it was obviously meant as a kind of racial slur towards her being an elf. As funny as it seemed Zuri had presumed that someone of noble upbringing would have been above such things, but the blonde was still in the awkward age of 11, so it could be that. The question of how to respond to the possible insult was still in the air for her when someone else took the initiative for her.

"What is funny here is the ferret-faced boy who thinks he's better than others just because their parents happened to be cousins!" Hermione practically hissed at Draco Malfoy as she stood a mere inch from the now terrified looking boy's face. Zuri stood up and pushed Hermione back down with one hand on her shoulder and used her body to hide the fact she pulled out her wand from her robes. It seemed like "knife-ears" was more potent of a slur Zuri had thought to have Hermione act like that. Zuri had no intention of making enemies even before getting to the school, but if the ferret-faced Draco Malfoy even thought about hurting Hermione, then someone would forget how to breathe.

"Don't you dare talk about my parents like that, you filthy mudblood!" There was no doubt in the boy's mind about how insulting of a word he just used, so Zuri didn't feel bad about pointing her wand at the boy's throat and concentrating on an image of a great, big, shiny dung beetle. She didn't know any spells per say and her hand was resting in her lap and she pointed her wands towards the boy as discreetly as possible and hoped her will would be enough to make her magic work. She felt a slight nudge when magic poured out of the tip of her wand and then nestled in the boy's throat. The magic moved as a relatively slow stream of light and no one other than her seemed to notice it. She quickly hid her wand in her sleeve and leaned back to watch the show.

"You're one to talk about being filthy, Malfoy! Your family should all be in Azkaban!" Ronald shouted in response to Draco Malfoy and the blonde turned towards the ginger and so did the two goons. Zuri glanced to her side and saw Hermione looking at the floor, depressed and hurt. Zuri placed a comforting hand on her shoulder and then tilted her head towards Malfoy and smiled when she looked at her. The annoying little ferret had just raised a hand on his neck and paused in mid-sentence.

"You –" A small cough stopped him, but he still continued. "Weasley's are –" This time it was a whole fit of dry, raspy coughs and a single belching sound, like there was something coming up from his throat and oh, there certainly was, or at least should be. Draco Malfoy bent down and coughed violently and then spat out something black and hard on the floor. Everyone, except Zuri, watched in silent horror as the black lump folded out its wings and buzzed up to the glass. The dung beetle was the size of a golf ball and was hitting itself repeatedly against the glass in an attempt to get out into the world. Feeling sorry for the insect Zuri held out a finger and allowed the beetle land on it. She looked each person cramped into the compartment in the eye in turn and then flicked the finger with the beetle towards Malfoy and the beetle started flying towards the horrified boy.

The boy yelped in horror and climbed over the goons he had come in the compartment with to get away from the beetle. Zuri then got up and closed the door behind them and sat back down with the beetle back on the tip of her finger. The stunned silence lasted for more than ten seconds, so Zuri picked up her Herbology book and started reading. It was another 5 seconds until Ronald, the rude one, interrupted the calm silence.

"You... You did that?" The ginger said with both disbelief and admiration apparent in his voice. "That was awesome! Malfoy definitely got what was coming to him!" Ronald, the easily impressed one, said and then just laughed at the memory and started to try and catch the surprisingly agile dung beetle still flying around in their compartment. Harry was equally impressed by her impromptu curse, but still felt apprehensive about congratulating her on resorting to violence to end an argument. Zuri had to admit she was impressed by the boy's maturity on the subject.

Zuri turned toward Hermione on her side and caught her opening and closing her mouth like a fish out of water, a rather comical gesture if she wouldn't have known better. Hermione had the same doubts about congratulating her on resorting to cursing a person that was just being rude, but was also contemplating on all the ways it could have been done for anyone other than her. Someone doing as much as traumatizing another human being just because she had been hurt was something that had not happened before. Zuri felt no need to downplay the fact it _had _been for her and smiled at the girl sheepishly.

"I... Zuri, you... What spell was that? Where did you learn it and how could you have cast it without us noticing?" Hermione blurted out, her mind falling back into the more comfortable topic of magic and studying. Zuri knew Hermione wanted to thank her for what she did, but even though she knew that, the fact that she didn't hurt a little.

She pulled out her note book, but then paused before writing anything. How would she answer Hermione's question, or could she even do that much? She knew no spells and her muteness stopped her from saying the incantations, so how had she done what she did just now? Hermione gave her time to think by trying to stop Ronald from poking the magically created dung beetle with his wand. Zuri decided not to think on what or how she did it too deeply and just wrote down all she actually knew about magic and showed it to Hermione, who excitedly read what she had written out loud.

"Our Magic is pure and primal power, our mind draws that power out and our body, or wand, directs and focuses it. I imagined the dung beetle in my mind and pointed my wand towards Malfoy." Hermione looked dumbstruck by this and Zuri couldn't blame the bookworm for it. She had a perfectly safe and tested shortcut to accessing her power, so she hadn't thought about _what _her magic was nearly at all. She might have the mind of a genius, but she was 11... and couldn't read minds, or see magical energy as colour, for that matter.

"What are you talking about?" Harry cut in to Zuri's surprise. He had been raised by muggles and had been as keen to understanding what magic was since finding out he was a wizard as Hermione was now. Zuri turned the notebook towards Harry and he read it with his lips moving silently. He nodded and then furrowed his brows as a thought crossed his mind.

"So, you didn't know what would happen just now?" Harry Potter said, in a stellar example of intuitive thinking, something rather rare in someone his age. When he put what she had done like _that_, then it was outright irresponsible and dangerous, like killing a fly with a 12 gauge in a crowded room. Zuri paused and then shook her head in dismissal of even the idea of such recklessness and caught herself nervously glancing towards Hermione. Even with all of these rather obvious tells she had surveyed herself, the three kids she had just lied to didn't catch on to her bluff and Zuri once again had to remind herself they were 11.

Then the conversation was steered towards Quidditch by Ronald and after half-heartedly memorizing the rules Ronald, the sports geek, blurted out Zuri and Hermione started conversing about how brooms functioned and if magical creatures could use them, or would there have to be a sentient being with magic for them to work. As it turned out Hermione had read several books that brushed the subject, but she had not had much interest in Quidditch or brooms as of yet, seeing it as a wizard equivalent of soccer.

It was fun letting Hermione babble on about the things she had learned from books and then interjecting her own opinion, making Hermione think about what she learned critically or read between the lines. Zuri found herself contradicting herself or twisting the concepts Hermione talked about, just to spark more conversation. Hermione thought these contradictions were because of the eccentric way her mind worked and Zuri didn't mind letting her believe that. The train ride towards Hogwarts was the longest time she remembered having an almost perpetual smile on her face.

"Oh, we're almost at Hogwarts. You should change into your robes while you still have time." Hermione cut in after glancing at her watch. Harry and Ron stopped talking about Quidditch and what House was the best and Zuri snapped out of Hermione's mind. She was talking to the three people who weren't already wearing their school robes, that being Harry and Zuri. Either Hermione picked up on her apprehension of letting the boys see her bandages and scars, or just presuming boys should get out when girls changed their clothes, she ordered Ronald and Harry to step out as Zuri changed. They both didn't mind doing this, feeling slightly uncomfortable about the whole thing. Zuri couldn't bring herself to tell Hermione she wasn't that thrilled about her presence either. She was decent enough to look away as she took of her green robes and pulled the black robes of Hogwarts on, but Zuri knew Hermione had seen the bandages and was wondering the reason behind them and feeling sorry for her.

That was the thing about her ability; she always knew. No one had to be rude, inconsiderate, vulgar, cruel, or sadistic; she still knew. She knew if they felt sorry for her, or hated her, or misunderstood her. Her muteness helped her in keeping her ability a secret, since she couldn't blurt out corrections on all the misconceptions people made about her, but all of them still hurt to some degree. Her intelligence and maturity was no doubt caused by this very ability, but she would prefer being ignorant and happy than... what she was now. She didn't want to put a name to what she was, that would solidify it in her mind and... Maturity and intelligence beyond her years, an unfortunate side-effect of her power; no normal child had these kinds of thoughts.

Hermione and Zuri vacated the compartment to let Harry and Ron change into school robes as well. Zuri was aware of Hermione's worried glances, but was too caught in contemplating the mess her life was and will be to pay her any mind. Why was she in this world? Was it because it had the means to heal her of her burns and her mind-reading was different, or because there were elves here? Had it been random chance she ended up here, or did she have a purpose to fulfil here?

"Zuri, about... about before, with Malfoy, I mean." Hermione tentatively started and fidgeted uncomfortably as she checked that the door to their compartment was closed. "I don't really agree on cursing someone when they're just being _obnoxious, _but what you did was... Well, in a word; awesome and I guess I'm trying to say thank you. Thank you for standing up for me." Hermione hurriedly said the last sentence and Zuri stared at her blankly. Had she just been too shy to say it in front of Ronald and Harry, or had this just occurred to her?

"Uh, well, that is if you were really standing up for me, that is, of course. He insulted you too, so it could as well be..." Hermione trailed off; turning beet red in her embarrassment over the realization she could have interpreted Zuri's actions completely wrong, since Draco Malfoy had insulted her as well. Hermione turned towards Zuri, half hiding behind her huge hair and Zuri became aware of the smile on her face only as she saw Hermione relax after seeing it. She might have known Hermione wanted to thank her, but it was a whole other matter when she said it out loud.

The rest of the train ride to Hogwarts was spent in relative silence and even Ronald didn't get on Zuri's nerves that much, though she had a feeling it was because Zuri had proven to be able to make people cough out bugs. When they got to Hogwarts station and climbed out onto the platform it seemed like word had spread about the incident with the dung beetle, since people seemed to try and steer clear of her and she heard murmur in the crowd, both audible and thoughts.

"Firs' years! Firs' years, over here! Oh, Hullo, Harry!" The giant that had been with Harry in Diagon alley boomed out, towering over anyone else on the platform, along with a lantern to guide the first years to him. His accent was as incomprehensible as ever, but his message was clear enough. Zuri followed the giant along with Hermione, Harry and Ronald, trying to stay as a group and succeeding by staying a little behind the main group. Hermione was babbling about what she knew about Hogwarts and wondered what kind of spells she'd need for the "test". Zuri knew there was a sorting hat involved from some bemused thoughts of the higher year students, but decided to keep this to herself. This way Hermione was too preoccupied on worrying about that and she could tune her out for the most part.

Zuri had to wonder about the decision to put travel weary and nervous 11-year olds on small boats and shuttling them across a cold and deep lake, but the breathtaking view they got of Hogwarts over the still water somewhat answered her question. Still seemed pretty dangerous and she thought she heard someone fall over the side at some point. There were panicked and excited thoughts about a giant squid a moment later and Zuri leaned over the side of the boat and concentrated on reaching out into the lake's depths.

"Zuri, what are you doing? That's dangerous." Hermione murmured next to her and tried to pull her back to her seat. Zuri paid her barely any mind as she heard a slippery and simple mind answer her from the depths. It was somewhat intelligent and could understand her, but best of all, it was a show-off. Zuri leaned back in the boat a little and held out her hand, gathering strange looks all around. Hermione became self aware very quickly. "Zuri, people are star – OH GOD!"

That was when the residential giant squid came up to the surface and swam next to their magically propelled boat as it held out one tentacle towards Zuri's outstretched hand. Zuri touched one of the animal's suckers and was surprised to find they were sharp and hard, at least on the tentacle she touched. The squid put its appendage back in the water and Zuri leaned in to pet it before it went back into the depths, it felt cold and slippery. Zuri sat back down as excited speech and overall disbelief clamoured around them. That was until they noticed her ears and the disbelief all but disappeared; of course an elf could and would do something like that. None of them had the courage to actually talk to her after she'd proven she had the giant squid at her beck and call. At least, that's what it looked to them.

"Zuri, what just happened? Why did you do that?" Hermione leaned in and whispered as they followed Hagrid up some steps and into a big room with great double at the end. Hagrid left them there, to simmer in their excitement. Zuri shrugged and this seemed good enough for Hermione, being too preoccupied remembering all the spells she might need. There were some others that also knew what the sorting really was like, but like Zuri they had decided to keep it to themselves.

The strict looking lady didn't make any kind of dramatic entrance but her appearance silenced the whole room instantly, something about the way she carried herself told them that this was the one teacher they didn't want to cross; the teacher of transfiguration and the head of house for Gryffindor, Professor McGonagall.

"Welcome to Hogwarts. The feast in your honour will shortly begin but before you take your seats in the Great Hall you must be sorted into your houses. The sorting ceremony is very difficult and important for you will be part of a 'family' while you study here. "You will all be part of a House where you will learn together, you will sleep in your House's dormitory and you will spend your time with your classmates or other houses. The four houses are: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin. Each house has its own history and has brought forward many great witches and wizards. Now while you are here, your triumphs will earn you points, any rule breaking and you will lose points. By the end of the year, the house with the most points is awarded the House cup, a great honour for anybody. I hope you will bring honour to your house's name. The sorting ceremony will begin momentarily. Do behave until you are called." McGonagall said, a feel of years of practice lingering in her speech, leaving the kids who didn't know about the sorting in the dark and making the ones who did smile to themselves. "Now, follow me, children!"

And that they did, naturally forming into a line behind the woman and following her up some huge and wide steps and through open doors into a great big hall with four long tables decorated in different colours. The Four Houses had their own tables and colour schemes, it seemed. They were led to the front of the hall and made to stand in front of the rest of the school. A big part of the school was looking at her and asking whose around them if she really was an elf. Then McGonagall brought out the Sorting hat and to the shock of the rest of the first years it started to sing. Zuri didn't really pay attention, since she was staring at the cacophony of colours streaming out of the hat's mouth and lingered around it.

"Abbot, Hanna!" McGonagall shouted and a girl stepped out from among them. Apparently the hat had stopped its song at some point. The girl became a Hufflepuff, but Zuri didn't really care, tuning out the names as she tried to remember the order of the alphabet of this world.

"Granger, Hermione!" McGonagall shouted and Hermione stepped out from among them, looking determined and only stumbling a little on her way. Seemed like Hermione would be sorted before her, but now she knew what house she could aim for when Hermione would be sorted before her.

"Gryffindor!" The hat shouted out and Hermione nearly ran into the now violently cheering table decorated with red and yellow. Okay, Zuri didn't really care for the colour scheme, but she'd try and get into Gryffindor. Zuri waited quite anxiously, the prolonged standing making the soles of her feet flare up in pain, but she endured it until her name was called.

"Ling-Yao, Zuri!" McGonagall shouted and Zuri gratefully walked to the stool and sat down, with the hat still above her eyes because her ears were keeping it from slipping further. The hat was sitting on her head and she felt an uncomfortable feeling that she was being probed and... leered at.

"_**Ah, Silent Child, welcome to Hogwarts." **_A mysterious, yet familiar voice rung out in her head and the hat moved slightly on her head, somehow seeming confused. _"Ah, you have quite a brain on you, that you do, but you're also extremely determined. Fought against near impossible odds to even get here... hmm..."_

"_Gryffindor, put me in Gryffindor." _Zuri said in return with her mind. The hat shook itself from side to side.

"_No, I'm afraid that is not your place, you are too ambitious for that, it will be..."_

"SLYTHERIN!"

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><p><strong>PONIES! Must have ponies! oh, and review, if you have time, ask yourself "What Would Fluttershy Do?"<strong>


	4. Tortured

**Yes, way too late and I have no excuses. Enjoy my brainfarts if you can. Have fun.  
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><p><strong>Chapter 4<strong>

**Tortured  
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She sat there with the hat resting uncomfortably on her ears. The only thing that stopped it from covering her eyes was the fact her ears perturbed away from her head a few inches. The weight of the hat pushing them down hurt, but it was nothing compared to the pain in her joints that had come back in full force now. Some part of her mind reasoned it had to be at least in part psychosomatic, but the rest of her mind wanted to set the stupid hat on fire.

Slytherin, the rival house of the house her only friends in this world were sorted into. This stupid and intrusive way of setting children against each other had just robbed her of such a simple thing as friendship. The hag wearing dark robes and another ridiculously pointy hat told her to hurry up and join her housemates. The look she shot back at her must have been murderous for her to take a step back like she did. Zuri diverted her eyes before she convinced the woman to stop breathing. The part of her mind that had been able to remain rational reminded her that it wasn't the old woman's fault.

Zuri gingerly took the hat off of her ears and handed it to the woman without making eye contact again. She didn't really care if the woman caught the hat or not as she let go of it and turned towards the table decorated in green and silver for the occasion. The applause over her sorting had been apprehensive, since the news about her stunt magicking a beetle out of Draco Malfoy's throat had spread like wildfire among the new students and had been relayed to some of the older students even before she walked up to the sorting hat. Everyone had assumed she would end up in any other house than Slytherin, where old families like the Malfoys were privileged and the general attitude towards anything other than a pure wizard was contempt in several different degrees.

So, here she was walking to a table full of people that had reasons to steer clear of her for their own well-being, or that despised her because she wasn't a noble. Well, the fact she was an elf to them didn't help either. She walked along the table until she spotted an empty seat and promptly sat down. The table was applauding, but it was nothing compared to the cheering when the other students had been sorted. Zuri stared at the table and concentrated on keeping her shaking and breathing in check.

It hurt so much.

**Severus Snape**

It would come as no surprise to anyone who had even cast a glance in his general direction, but let it be known that Severus Snape did not like any school celebrations, especially the one where the especially loud and bad-mannered first graders were introduced into the soul-leeching hive mind of the student populous. Granted, he might be overplaying the horrors of what was essentially a very large collection of children of varying ages, but if you were to teach the said herd of blank-staring imbeciles you'd have similar opinions. You might not say it out loud, or you would turn into drinking, or, god forbid, give into the little monster and be utterly destroyed within a few school years.

He had watched all the small, nervous, little terrors to be walk up to the hat and had made mental note of every single one that was sorted into his House. His godson, Draco, had been cast into Slytherin, of course and there was no surprise in it, but he did take note of a murderous glance he shot at a peculiar white-haired girl. Of course, he had been aware of Potter attending the school starting that year and seeing how much the brat reminder his asshole of a father made him grit his teeth in anger. The green eyes just added insult to injury, but the brat being sorted into Gryffindor came as no surprise and at least relieved him of the dread of tending for the brat. If he was as much like his father he seemed to be, then he didn't envy Minerva one bit.

He didn't pay much attention to the white-haired girl Draco seemed to have a problem with, but quirked an eyebrow when he noticed the hat held being up by her pointy ears. Could Draco really be prejudicial enough to hate the girl just because of that? Well, looking at Lucius and how he felt about anything, "not noble and agreeing with him" then yes, but still, Draco was his godson, he should have known better. The girl was scrawny, even for an eleven year old, but if she was an elf, as the ears seemed to suggest, then it was nothing to be worried about.

"Slytherin!" The hat announced and he saw the girl turn completely rigid at the word. He let out a small groan as he realized the girl hadn't wanted to be sorted into his House. The fact that it was probably his idiotic godson's fault didn't help to alleviate his annoyance. Now he would have to have a talk with this girl about the fact there was nothing wrong being in Slytherin and if anyone gave her trouble she should go a prefect or him if the one giving her trouble happened to be a prefect. God have mercy on the prefect's immortal soul if that ever was the case…

Minerva told the girl to hurry up and give the hat back and Snape raised his other eyebrow when the girl's glare made the transfiguration professor take an involuntary step back. This was the woman who scoffed at trolls and was only healthily apprehensive about dragons. This girl might just fit in with his snakes, after all. The girl handed the hat to Minerva and slowly made her way to the cheering Slytherin table. Something about the way she walked unnerved him. She was still visibly tense, but moved slowly and stiffly. Could she be that terrified of Slytherin? She didn't meet anyone's eyes and the cheering quickly faded away and Snape lost her in the crowd of students. She was a concern for a later date anyways.

The rest of the sorting went without any more surprises on his part. The children of noble houses got into his House along with some others he didn't know, but were obviously from wizarding families, taking how comfortable they seemed in robes. There was always a certain amount of uncomfort on the first week or so with the muggleborn students. They were either timid about it or thinking that they looked ridiculous, or they were way too excited about the whole thing. Dumbledore made his little speech and the food arrived, at last. Snape ignored the cheers of the students and dug in as soon as Dumbledore sat back down. He had been forced to skip lunch with all the paperwork that came with the start of a semester.

He set his gaze on the student body after the first few mouthfuls. The house-elves always made delicious food, but on the opening ceremony night they always seemed to go one step beyond what they usually did. Yes, he only came to this thing out of a sense of duty and the food. He honestly didn't know which outweighed the other. He let his gaze scan the students, starting from the Gryffindor table, since his snakes would know to keep the younger students in line. He didn't search out the Potter brat, really, but seeing the smug little bastard looking back at him with Lily's eyes did give him pause. He knew he shouldn't hate an eleven year old child this much, but he had to tear his eyes away from the little prick before he reached for his wand. It was like his very existence reminded him that Lily had chosen that vacant-stared asshole before… well, he screwed up his own chance, he knew that, but anyone else would have been better!

He skimmed over the rest of the students, the look in his eyes pausing some of the more rowdy students. His eyes fell on his snakes and he felt a small sense of pride seeing them eating and chatting amiably, but not jumping on the tables or waving their wands around haphazardly. As if on que, he heard a small explosion from the Gryffindor table and saw one especially dumb-looking boy with a face full of soot and hair on end. _He _would have took the boy's wand away for endangering his fellow students like that, but Minerva only smiled at the jovial laughter around the boy. Seriously, the fact the school didn't have dozens of deaths by accidental magic every year was beyond him. The best explanation he could think of was that the castle was so heavily enchanted that magic without solid form and intention was muffled enough to be non-lethal.

He swept his eyes across the student body again, maybe making guesses as to who would be giving him more evidence to validate his theory when he caught a glimpse of white hair slip out of the hall's open double doors. His eyes shot to the Slytherin table and he indeed didn't see the elf girl anywhere among his other Snakes. He would have more than a few harsh words for the prefects for letting the girl go like this, but right now there was an eleven-year old child wandering in the castle. He looked at his plate longingly and the desserts and assorted dishes laid out on the table in front of him.

"God damn, these insufferable little…" Snape grumbled as he stood up from the teachers table and strode out of the hall. Walking along the Slytherin table and checking if he had missed the small elf girl among the older students, but cursed under his breath again as she was nowhere to be seen.

**Zuri Ling-Yao**

Zuri stumbled along the wall in the strange castle she'd been led to. She had half-forgotten the reason she left the great big hall, but she did remember it being painfully noisy and even the sight of all the food on the tables made her gag. The information she had gleaned from the healer less than a week ago flashed into her mind. One of the side-effect of amphetamines was a loss of appetite, so they were probably still taking effect. Taking into account how tired she had been before taking one of them in the train and the fact she hadn't eaten in… she didn't really know. Had she eaten something on the train, or had her appetite disappeared there already?

Zuri slid off the wall she was leaning on as the hallway forked and she unceremoniously crashed to the floor. Her world became a kaleidoscope of pain and black dots darting around her vision as the pain of her burns pushed through the already fading pain medication. Where was the bottle? Was it still in her trunk, or had she taken it with her? Did she have the amphetamine bottle with her? Had she left them both in her trunk? She didn't feel anything pressing against her body as she lay there, so her pockets at least seemed empty.

What was she going to do without the medication to take away the pain? She _knew _it was nearly impossible to move with them aggravated like this. How long would it take for someone to find her? Had she wandered into an unused part of the castle and would she stay here on the floor until her consciousness slipped out from her as either starvation or the infection from her raw burns finished her off? Was this really how she was going to –

"_Kissing the floor? Look at that, maybe you can be house broken next, since you already know some manners." _Zuri flinched from the voice and painstakingly shifted her head to the side to see her brother standing over her. He flicked his hand and a burst of green flame barely missed her face. Her body locked up and her breath hitched in her throat. _"Well, are you going to answer me, or not? We both know what you can do, so answer me with your mind!"_

Another flash of flame hit the ground in front of her face and Zuri tried to crawl away from it, but her joints had locked up from the fear and pain. She tried to focus her mind outward and brush her brother's mind with her own, but a building sense of pressure behind her eyes stopped her. Her power had been stripped from her in this world. What would her brother do to her when he found that out? He had always held himself back because of the fear of what she could do if she became desperate enough, even with his inherent resistance to her power. Zuri doubted she could influence him at all right now, as she was now.

Zuri tried to shy away from her brother, but this only served to provoke him into kicking her in the ribs and she was knocked onto the castle's cobblestone wall, hitting her head and scraping her bandaged burns. Her vision swam and dots of black danced across her vision, but her brother only clarified in her vision. He tossed a ball of his green flame from one hand to the other, smiling about her passiveness. She knew that her crying only made him enjoy it more, but she couldn't help it. It was painful, it all hurt her so much.

"_We both know you deserve this, you freak." _His voice was calm and unamused, he had stopped convincing himself years ago and was only stating the fact to remind her now. _"Everything I've done and will do is justified. You deserve every bit of it after what you did. You are a monster and an unrepentant murderer. Mother, father, me, 24 soldiers, 117 mine workers, 12 clerks and officials, even half a dozen children living in the adjacent port village. They were playing out in a field when the rock slung by the avatar came crashing down on them."_

No, that couldn't be true. She had made sure she only killed to ones in the base. She had concentrated the energy on the base alone to gather the energy needed to punch through, like the Avatar's collective mind had instructed. There couldn't have been… The avatar state brought out Aang's potential and used the past Avatars' experience to channel and direct it. Zuri had effectively replaced the past avatars and directed Aang's power the way she wanted. Could Aang really control all that condensed power when the link between Zuri's mind and his was severed?

"_Let me answer that; No, his survival instinct would kick in and he would disperse it to protect himself. The resulting blast of bending energy would be like a giant explosion. Flinging chunks of earth for miles, causing the sea rise up in great big tsunamis and let's not forget the fiery wind that would scorch every living thing in the vicinity, probably not reaching as far as the rocks, but they were propelled by the fire and Wind behind them. You probably caused the deaths of more people you know of." _The image of her brother knelt down and said the next words in a deliberate whisper as he leaned in. _"And you made the avatar a killer and a monster in the eyes of the world. That's pretty damn evil, if you ask me."_

No, I didn't mean to do it! I only wanted to live! I didn't want my life to end without accomplishing anything at all! I only wanted to get out, to have a chance at normalcy, to be able to walk freely and move without pain or fear of torture, you sadistic asshole! I wanted to… I didn't mean to…

"_We are all dead! You killed us! You made a pacifist monk into a tool for mass murder and now you're excepting to walk away without any repercussions? You deserve a fate worse than death for what you did!" _Her brother's image jumped into startling clarity and the green fire in his hand made his shadow jump behind him in the dim stone hallway. _"And I'm going make damn sure that is what you get, you homicidal freak."_

**Severus Snape**

Snape had a very bad feeling about all this. Where would an emotionally distraught 11-year old girl go when she thought her school had just thrown her out to the wolves? That was the first question he asked, but not by far the last. Another question would be why the girl had left the feast to begin with. The children had been on the train since 9 in the morning and had only been offered candy and snacks on the ride to Hogwarts, so something as basic as hunger had always kept them from wandering off.

And here was this little elf eared girl wandering off without even touching her food. The girl had looked tiny in the schools robes, but taken elves' slender build in general he had dismissed the fact at the time, but there should be no reason for a child to turn down a free meal. What had started as a search for disobedient little brat had now escalated into a frantic search for the girl. There was something that made him think of the worst possible scenario about this whole thing. Maybe the girl had stumbled on stairs and had hit her head? Maybe she was lying on the end of that flight of stairs in a slowly growing pool of blood?

After he had ran to the staircase in question and didn't find a body in a pool of blood he tried to force himself to calm down and figure out what exactly made him worry about this particular girl so much. He had noticed something in the way she walked off the Sorting hat, but had dismissed it at the time. That slow, carefully smooth way of walking was strange for such a young child, but he couldn't for the life of him figure out why!

He doubled back the way he came and walked down a different hallway. No child would go far in a strange castle, they would probably try and find a place to mope about the unfairness of it all. Going down the grand steps would only take them to the grounds of the castle and a crisp autumn night. Big open spaces weren't what you looked for when you were feeling mopey, he knew that from experience. Somewhere you felt hidden and safe would be ideal.

Then again, he wasn't sure why the girl had left the hall, or if she had just gone to find the bathroom, so he was just randomly picking hallways to check, trying to justify his decision every time he did. He started to feel silly about going after the girl at all, when he saw a flicker of green light around the corner of the hallway he was walking in. The torches in the castle were enchanted, but they all had a normal colored flame. This had to be magically induced flame and that alone made him take his wand out. The crackle of magic in the air as he approached made him raise it.

The sight of a dark clad man bearing over the white haired elf girl he had been searching for made him cast a series of the nastiest curses he could think of at the man. He had been the source of the green flame and had no time to react before Snape's curses hit him…

And then disintegrated him completely. Snape stared at the spot the man had stood in a second ago and tried to think if the combination of the curses he'd used could do that. No, there was no way that could have been possible and the magical energy crackling in the air had not disappeared. It had seemed to only grow in intensity as the man disappeared. Was the man's disintegration an illusion to make him drop his guard? Why would someone attack this girl? Why was there such powerful magic still in the air if the man wanted to sneak up on him? Was the girl alright?

Snape glanced down at the girl and felt his jaw slacken a little before he caught himself. The girl's eyes were focused on a point in the air in front of her and her jaw worked soundlessly. She was beyond terrified and still could not get a word out of her mouth. Had the man used a silencing spell on the girl? The girl's eyes were red and wide as saucers from fear. Silent tears streamed down the girl's face as she lay motionless against the stone wall. What had happened here? He had not heard anything from the girl, no screams or even a whimper and man had not said a word before he…

Disintegrated... Or, was dispersed into the magical energy crackling in the air still… No, there's no way! No way in hell an 11-year old girl could make a magical projection that complex. Highly educated wizards who'd been researching the art could do it, but it took a full magical education, years of work and they could only manifest _specific _things. Exactly like the _patronus _spell, it varied between people and was usually unique.

The girl was still staring into a space in front of her, her mouth working soundlessly. Snape waved his wand in an attempt to dispel the muting spell, but was surprised find none cast on the girl. He knelt down beside the girl and she didn't react in anyway. Was she hallucinating that the man he had seen was there? Could a deeply rooted psychological trauma really cause for a child to create a magical projection of their fear? Well, yes, but not anything near the level of what he just saw. The girl flinched away from something Snape couldn't see and as the girl moved he noticed the bandages on the girl's throat and under her robes. He saw fresh blood on those bandages.

"Ling-Yao, look at me. Calm down and look at me." Snape said to the clearly hallucinating girl. Of course the wounds she had under those bandages could be self-inflicted through the magical projection, but something must have happened to root the psychological trauma in the girl's mind that the image came from. Someone had hurt this girl far worse than they had any right and it made Snape very angry. His childhood had not been happy in any regard, but a mental breakdown of this level hinted at something even more evil than an abusive father. There could be no adequate excuse for something like this. "Snap out of it!"

He had regretted losing his temper the moment the words left his mouth, but at least it got the girl's attention as her terrified eyes focused on him. He could see a flash of recognition in her eyes and for a second thought that the girl recognized him and would calm down. He should have known the girl would only see him as a part of her hallucination and lash out at him. The way she lashed out surprised him more than the fact she did so.

An uncomfortable pressure started to build between his eyes as his eyes were locked onto the girl's red ones. He wondered about the unusual color of her eyes and if her white hair was related to it and thus didn't realize what the pressure between his eyes meant. The pressure was one of the things that could happen when the walls of his occlumency were prodded. When he became aware of this it was too late for him to do anything to combat the feeling of overlapping minds.

Actually, he had left a cauldron of some very important potion boiling before going up for the feast. He really should go and check on it before it was ruined. It would take days to brew another patch and he had to prepare for the start of his classes. Of course, he didn't usually leave boiling cauldron's unattended if he could help it, but… No, actually he wouldn't leave them to boil unattended. He would just use a stasis spell to stop the cooking process in the cauldron and then tend to the students. Especially when brewing… What had he been brewing exactly?

His mind snapped back into focus with a shot of intense pain between his temples and he stopped just before he turned the corner of the hallway. He looked back to the girl lying on the ground trembling like a leaf in fear and weeping silently. An eleven-year old girl had just breached his occlumency defenses and nearly convinced him to leave her crying and hallucinating in a hallway by making him think he had a cauldron brewing back in his quarters.

An eleven-year old girl was more talented in legilimency than the dark lord. He had to stand there for a moment to let that fact sink in. It was something that should be impossible, but what else could explain what had happened to him just now? They had made eye contact and his thoughts had derailed according to the girl's wish of being left alone. His deeply ingrained occlumency had been slow to combat the mental intrusion, but the fact the girl had been able to sway him at all alarmed him.

The girl was a student and obviously in great pain for reasons he didn't know, but how was he supposed to handle this? The girl didn't seem to be in a state where she would listen to reason and the pure amount of magic she was producing was a danger to her health. She had to be subdued before he could help her, but getting close to her would mean the risk of locking eyes with her and giving her a chance to use her legilimency. Trying to knock her out with a spell could do more harm than good, with the magic still crackling around her. There was the possibility the spell would become supercharged and explode violently, either taking the wall the girl was leaning on with its force, or putting her and anyone in a 100 meter radius into a comatose state.

He did carry some potent sleeping potion with him, but he had to get her to swallow it for it to take effect. Taking her terrified state that was highly unlikely. He started going over the ingredients in the brew he had with him and concluded that it would still be somewhat effective if inhaled as fumes. He only had to heat the potion enough in its bottle for it to start fuming and have the girl breathe it. As far as he could tell it shouldn't smell too pungent and he wasn't going to smell it to check.

Great, now he had a plan to keep this girl from killing herself. Snape stepped forward and pulled out the vial of potion and shielded his hand with a handkerchief as he held his wand on the bottle to heat the liquid inside. The moment he saw tendrils of white smoke come out of the bottle he brought the bottle to the girl's nose and turned his eyes to the side to avoid direct eye contact. Even with his peripheral vision he could see the girl react by shying away from the vial Snape glanced at the vial only long enough to position it again. He only turned his eyes towards the girl when the crackle of magic in the air subsided and the girl's body grew still. He put the cork back on the vial and placed it back into his robes.

The girl was resting against the masonry of the school and now Snape was truly able to see how malnourished she looked. Her cheeks were sunken in and she had black circles under her eyes. There must have been another unconscious enchantment on the girl to make people ignore her appearance. A child that was able to use legilimency at her age could very well be able to do that. And if she had been casting a wandless magic unconsciously while her magic was still immature, then it was more than enough explanation for her mental and magical breakdown.

Rushing through the infirmary wing's doors loud enough to have Madame Pomfrey hurry out of her office either to berate someone for running into her part of the castle, or tend to a patient. Snape levitated the girl onto a made bed and motioned urgently to her as he put away his wand. It would be faster for madame Pomfrey to examine the girl than Snape to explain. Pomfrey waved her wand over the girl's prone body and then did it again a moment later as her cheeks went pale. She snapped her wand towards her office and a vial barreled into her outstretched hand with an audible _smack_. The school nurse promptly levitated a single orb of liquid from the bottle and fed it down the girl's throat.

"Why didn't you bring her to me earlier, Severus?" Pomfrey snapped as her wand jerked as vials and bottles of medicine flew out of her office. He raised a brow at the comment and Pomfrey pointed her wand at his face menacingly. "This girl couldn't have been walking about without excruciating pain. I know you're smart enough to notice something like that. Even the way she made it to the school baffles me…"

Pomfrey fell silent and waved her wand over the girl again, slower and with a perplexed expression on her face. Snape was quickly losing his grasp of the situation. Could this girl really be strong-willed enough to move with the kind of injury Pomfrey was suggesting at? The girl being able of such high level magic was unnerving enough on its own.

"Is this girl muggleborn?" Pomfrey asked as her wand worked over the girl. Snape had not gone over the students yet, since they had just been sorted into their Houses and the files on the ones that had been sorted into his should be waiting on his desk. The way the girl had acted during the sorting gave no clue to that either, so he wasn't confident enough to make an educated.

"I don't know. I didn't see her take anything, but I lost her for a while after she left the feast." If the girl had taken some kind of muggle medicine, then it could explain a lot of things. Muggle medicine didn't work on wizards the same way it did on them. A wizard can unconsciously or consciously reduce or strengthen the medicines effect, so using muggle medicine was avoided and considered dangerous. Could the legilimency be because of some drug? It was a mental discipline, so maybe a specific stimulant could make it easier, but she would have had to have a natural talent for it… The muggle medicine she had taken could be killing this girl and Pomfrey needed to know what it was to save her…

"Miss Ling-Yao, what muggle medication are you on? We need to know." Snape asked as he leaned over her and made sure she was looking him in the eye. Her eyes drifted away from him and traced things that weren't in the room. Snape cursed under his breath and then used legilimency to prod the girl's mind.

He wouldn't say that the reaction the girl had surprised him, but the power behind it did. The girl's eyes snapped to meet his and the potions master felt the girl him back by force, rather than shielding her own mind.

_The smell of polished leather and old clothes in the darkness, Lily's dead body, those bright green eyes lifeless dull and lifeless, father like son, it's your fault Death Eater._

The darkly clothed potions master reeled back and hit the bed next to the girls and the noise his panicked scampering made echoed in the silent hospital wing of the castle. What the girl had done was more than going over some of his most shielded memories. She had been actually able to pierce through his occlumency and pull his greatest mistakes and fears into the forefront of his mind and have him relive them in vivid detail. He was shaking and felt like he was going to be sick, but this girl could die if they didn't know what she'd taken. Snape locked his eyes with the girl again and this time the girl didn't lash out, but she did prod his mind as forcibly as the dark lord did, looking into his mind to see his intention.

"_Vicodin and medical amphetamine," _Snape caught his own mouth saying. Pomfrey raised an eyebrow at him, but turned back to the girl with only a frown. She was aware of legilimency and occlumency and his role as a double agent as he was able to do both. She wouldn't agree with the methods, but the information could have very well saved this girl's life.

"You can go and tend to your duties, Severus. I have any potion I might need here and I'll call you if need be." Pomfrey muttered as potions and poultices flew in and out of her office and as her wand hovered over the girl constantly. She was practicing her art with such speed Severus didn't even try to take count of what she did in his addled state. His occlumency had been punched through and he had been reminded of the most traumatizing moments of his life in a single moment. He needed a moment alone before addressing the new students.

As much trouble this girl had brought him in such short amount of time, he was still looking forward to seeing if this girl could grow to be even close to as talented as her talent with legilimency suggested.

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><p><strong>Luna is best pony, that is all.<strong>


	5. Trust

**Yes, it is continued. I shall try and see to my other stories a little. Believe it.  
><strong>

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><p><strong>Chapter 5<strong>

**Trust  
><strong>

Hogwarts' potions master and the head of the House of Slytherin rushed into his own personal office and drank half a glass of fire whiskey after a few minutes of nervous pacing. What the elf girl had done to him rattled him more than he would have liked to admit. Even the fact that there was someone that could ignore his practiced art of occlumency so nonchalantly disheartened him, but for it to be an 11-year old girl unnerved him even more. It was as puzzling as it was infuriating. How did Zuri Ling-Yao come to master legilimency so completely and did it have anything to do with her more than obvious mental and physical abuse? And the girl seemed to have some elf blood in her as well… Did the elves abuse her for being a witch?

She couldn't be in any better hands for now and he had a whole new year of small and annoying children to herd into the student populace. He drank a small vial of breath freshening potion and started the short walk to the Slytherin common room. He didn't want the new students to catch him smelling like alcohol on their first meeting with him. At the entrance he had to pause and straighten his robes and remember what the password was. He still felt a little out of sorts, but the fire whiskey had at least steadied his nerves enough for him to act his part for the new first years.

He stepped in and put on a stern face to silence the gathered slytherins. He gave his usual speech about sticking together and the pride of Slytherins, but made sure to stress the fact he was disappointed in the prefects and his whole House for letting Zuri wander out of the great hall. It dampened the mood and made the start of their student life feel awkward, but Zuri really shouldn't have been able to leave unnoticed. Someone of his House must have seen her slip out, but had decided not to speak up. He didn't like taking points off of his own House this early in the school year, but 10 points for each prefect was lenient in his opinion. They nearly got someone killed with their negligence.

His House cleared out and went to sort out their belongings for the coming school year and Severus walked out to his office. He would have to tell Dumbledore and the other teachers about the girl, but should he discern her talent in legilimency? It was such an obscure magical art that not every one of his fellow teachers would even know of it, so why estrange them from the girl by telling them she could read their thoughts like an open book?

Severus Snape didn't stop to stare at walls to contemplate on this, but he did keep it on his mind as he prepared for his coming classes. He taught Potions for the six other years of students and he had to compile his student rosters and see to other bureaucrat nonsense. He had done it long enough to think of Zuri Ling-Yao's case at the same time.

By the time he had the next day and some of the coming week sorted out he had convinced himself he should keep the legilimency from his fellow teachers and tell them of her abuse and the magical capability to produce a magical projection without the help of a wand and under the influence of muggle medicine. He would have to visit Madam Pomfrey for details in the morning and inform the rest of the teachers either by memo or in the faculty meeting at the end of the week, depending on if the girl could attend classes by then or not.

**Zuri Ling-Yao**

Her memory became clouded and fragmented after she had started hallucinating her brother tormenting her. All she could gather from the fragmented memories was the fact that her new Head of House had saved her and brought her to the medical wing. She was almost certain he had found out about her mind reading ability and now she was bedridden in the hospital wing of the magical school. The fuzy medical witch had taken her "muggle medicine" away and she felt terrible. Her mind was sluggish and the world felt cold and lifeless, not even mentioning how monotone it was compared to the magical light show it was when she had her medicine.

At least there was a trained healer tending to her now and as bad she felt there was only the constant discomfort and ache of her burns, but it was nowhere near painful, per se. She could move her arms and legs with only little pain, but the grogginess and her inability to focus properly was what annoyed her.

From what she could gather in her heavily drugged state was that she had slept through the night and it was early morning. Also, it seemed like she had been changed out of her robes and her burns had been freshly bandaged. The healer witch hadn't made eye contact long enough for her to see when she'd be able to get to learning magic. She had been staring at the masonry of the castle as she laid there for what felt like an hour before she hear the doors to the infirmary open and steady footsteps come closer. She didn't bother to move her head to see who it was because she felt very comfortable lying there and it was probably not that important to see the person.

"How is the student I brought in yesterday doing?" The man asked in a hushed voice as the healing witch met her a couple of beds away from her bed. There was a weight to his question Zuri reasoned to mean he wanted to know about the reason of the bandages or something she had done when her memory cut out.

"I have her on some pain relieving and relaxing tonics taking to account what you told me about the panicked state you found her in, but I am going to need you to make some specialized potions for those burns." Zuri could hear venom in the woman's voice, as well as a wavering of her voice she connected with pity, but she couldn't be sure. So, it really wouldn't be a flick of the wand kind of thing after all. Even a world where a thing like magic wands and wizards and witches were true couldn't make her pain go away completely. She wondered if she should feel as guilty as she did for what she did to get here.

"What do you mean? She came to Hogwarts along with the rest of the students and was walking around yesterday and now you're saying she can't even walk?" The man's voice stayed hushed but Zuri could make out disbelief.

"Those burns weren't made by a spell or a curse, Severus. She was chained down and then burned bad enough to make it impossible for her to move without excruciating pain!" The woman didn't raise her voice in volume, but she hissed out the last sentence and then fell silent. Zuri imagined that she turned her face to the side and bit back a sob, but it could have been just her flare for drama. There was moment when both of them were silent that seemed to stretch on, but only lasted ten seconds at most.

"It would explain how she could take an overdose of pain medication and amphetamine and stay lucid for as long as she did. Is she awake?" The man asked in the same hushed voice and Zuri couldn't make out a change in his tone. This man was no stranger to cruelty.

"I don't know. I hope not. There is one more thing I should mention; the girl is mute. She doesn't have vocal cords and I can't find any evidence the scars on her neck have anything to do with it." The woman sounded tired and Zuri could just imagine her rubbing her temples. The woman's heels clicked on the tiles as she walked away without another word and after a moment Zuri heard the man walking over to her bed. He paused next to the chair at the side of the bed but didn't sit down.

"I am Severus Snape, the Potions master of this school and the Head of the House of Slytherin." The man introduced himself in a firmer voice as Zuri had her eyes open. It took her a few seconds to turn her eyes towards the man. She was even more sluggish than she had thought. He didn't avert his eyes, but Zuri still caught Severus Snape's shoulders tensing as their eyes met. It indeed did seem like the man was aware of her gift of reading people's minds. She felt too tired to try and read this man's mind, but it did also seem that he had some way to block her from doing so regardless. There had been a few like that before, people who had a resistance to her "ability". She had learned how to work past that when she had been desperate for a distraction. She nodded weakly at his introduction. It was a relief the man wasn't excepting for her to respond by speaking.

"First of all I would like to address the reason you wandered out of the great hall yesterday," The dark clad man said and sat down on the chair next to Zuri's bed. "I will keep this brief, as Madam Pomfrey surely frowns upon bothering you when your wounds are as they are. There is nothing wrong in being a Slytherin, Miss Ling-Yao. We are described as ambitious, cunning and proud, I see nothing wrong with that. Slytherin is a house that stands its own and holds together to help each other. There is a saying I hope will continue to ring true "There's no greater foe or more trusted friend than a Slytherin". I hope my House will show you the truth of this statement and alleviate your prejudice."

He paused and Zuri simply stared at him. She felt too tired to raise an eyebrow or nod, so her new Head of House probably thought she hadn't understood a word, or that she was tripping balls from the pain medication and was only staring at him because she thought his face was turning into a clock. That would actually be pretty funny to see, even if it was a disturbing image to most. Zuri had to wonder if it was possible to actually make that happen with magic…

"Regrettably you will not be attending classes for the foreseeable future, but I and Madam Pomfrey will do everything within our power to have you walking again and attending classes as soon as possible." Snape then stood up from his chair and seemingly contemplated on if he should say something or not. "I also do not permit you to use legilimency without permission. People have a right for their privacy, after all."

The man said it like she was supposed to be shocked about him knowing about it, but Zuri only thought this to be childish and manipulative on his part. She still felt too tired to do react to this in any other way than looking at him in the eye and maybe raising an eyebrow, with her face feeling as numb as it was, it was hard to tell. As the man started to walk away the fact that she would be spending her "foreseeable future" in this infirmary and other than her wand, she had none of her personal belongings. She let out a weak whistle to grab the man's attention and luckily he actually heard it. Her mouth seemed to be dry, but she would address that when the medical witch came to check on her. Her new Head of House raised an eyebrow at her and Zuri motioned with her hands as you would if you were leafing through a book and then spread his palms apart. She could almost see his mind working out what she was trying to convey, but Zuri felt too drained for anything more animated sign language. She closed her eyes and found it hard to open them again. She definitely didn't have it in her to go into any further detail.

"I will see to having your belongings being brought here. Madam Pomfrey will have to confiscate your muggle medicine, though." The man stated before his footsteps were walking towards the door again. Well, at least she would have something to read as she was bedridden. She couldn't open her eyes and thinking of anything took several seconds, so Zuri was glad to surrender to sleep.

**Harry Potter**

Harry's first week in Hogwarts had been disorienting, but still easily the best week of his life. He had made more friends on the single week he'd been in Hogwarts than he had during his whole life with the Dursleys. The food was great, the teachers were nice and he had his own bed, also, he could do magic. That had taken a while to sink in and since he could do little to nothing with his wand it was still a little hard to believe, but it was the reality of the situation. He was a wizard as his parents had been before him

"Mate, why do we have Potions with Slytherin? Who in their right mind would think that's a good idea?" Ron exclaimed as they walked through the castle and navigated the dungeons to find the Potions classroom. The people ahead of them had walked down the wrong hallway a few times and ultimately silently agreed on following a first-year Slytherin to find the classroom. Seriously, Hogwarts was way too confusing to be a school, you know, a place where children wander about. "I bet that creep Snape made it so, just to have the opportunity to take points from Gryffindor. Yeah, it's either that or it was Dumbledore. Not a single wizard can figure that guy out."

"It might not be that bad. Not all of them are like Malfoy, you know." As little as they knew about their rival House, other than that they were their sworn enemy, at least one of them was at least decent: The white-haired elf girl they had met on the train and that had made Malfoy spit out a dung beetle. Harry and Ron had both been shocked to see her get sorted into Slytherin, but they had forgotten about her during the week.

"Yeah, she was kind of cool, but do you really want to meet her now, when she's part of Slytherin? I don't know about you, but I don't want to be coughing up beetles. Seriously, where do you learn how to do that, anyways?" Ron wondered as they stood around the door to the Potions classroom, Slytherins on one side of the door and Gryffindors on the other. Harry was looking for a splash of white hair and pointy ears from the mob of Slytherins, but the girl was nowhere to be seen.

"Maybe it's an elf thing? You said they were woodfolk, didn't you?" Harry said and turned his attention back to Ron. Ron had also been looking at the Slytherins, but he had probably only been glaring at Malfoy.

"From what I heard, yeah. I wonder what other kind of curses she knows." Ron answered and opened his mouth to speculate on what exactly the elves had taught the girl before being interrupted by a bushy-haired girl.

"Zuri was not raised by elves." The bushy-haired girl said in a bossy tone. She was holding the heavy Potions book open on her right forearm and had being reading it before they started talking about Zuri. Harry hadn't talked to the girl much since the train, but she had been more friendly with the elf girl than he had been. She had actually asked about Zuri being sorted into Slytherin and McGonagall had suggested that they would see the girl during Potions class, at least. "Also, what she did wasn't a curse; it was an enchantment, or a spell. She wasn't sure which herself and I haven't found it in any of the books I've looked for it in."

"Whatever it was, it was creepy as hell. It's not that surprising she got sorted into Slytherin." Ron blurted out and Harry saw Hermione tighten her grip on her book and grit her jaw for a second. Harry had learned to notice the signs of a violent outburst through experience and took a step back.

"I would like to see you do something even close to what she did! Do you even know how impressive what she did was? She cast a silent spell when she has had no training and had only bought her wand the following day. You can't even begin to judge her when you can't even turn your rat yellow!" Hermione had been quiet and soft spoken at best before, so her outburst came as a surprise to Ron and Harry, as well as everyone around them. All eyes seemed to turn to her and she shrunk back from all the attention. She returned to leaning on the dungeon wall and reading her book in silence, but with a blush on her cheeks.

"What's her problem?" Ron asked, sounding like he was completely incredulous as to the reason Hermione was upset.

"You did kind of insult her friend…" Harry said and decided not to take Ron's side in this argument. Why would his view on what Zuri was like change, just because she had been sorted into Slytherin? Ron looked at Harry like he had grown a second head.

"But her being a Slytherin means she _is _like Malfoy! She was sorted into Slytherin, so that means she is like a Slytherin. How do you not see this?" Ron was getting flustered and Harry wasn't sure if he was talking to Hermione or him.

"And?" Hermione retorted, not pretending to read her book anymore. "Gryffindor plays quidditch against them and we sleep in different parts of the castle, but what else is there?"

"You might have not noticed with your nose buried in books, but they hate our guts!" Ron stated, seeming to be absolutely certain that this would end the argument. Harry had decided to try and stay out of the debate and could see Hermione clenching her jaw again in frustration.

"I don't have to be a Slytherin to hate someone like you." She hissed out and gave Ron a glare that rivaled aunt Petunia's in toxicity. Ron took a step back and turned to him for input, but Harry couldn't say he agreed with Ron, since he's only known of being a wizard for less than a month and the only Slytherins he'd met were Malfoy and Zuri. He only shrugged and convinced Ron to drop the subject, since he didn't know which side he was on.

To somewhat break the awkward atmosphere Professor Snape opened the dungeon door a minute later and both Houses of first years filed into the room, naturally splitting into the Gryffindor side and the Slytherin side. Harry tried to spot the pointy ears and white hair as the Slytherins took their seats, but it seemed like Zuri was not present. Snape didn't say anything before starting to call names from a piece of parchment, but the silence in the classroom was nearly deafening. He had the kind of authority that made hyperactive kids shut up and adults listen. He was very stern and scary looking to boot.

"Ah, Potter… our new _celebrity._" Snape gave Harry a slightly extended glare, but then continued calling out names, but the fact that no one else warranted a remark disturbed Harry. Did Snape have something against him? Could it be the strange fame he had gotten from doing something as extraordinary as _not dying_? Harry had never understood it, since hearing about it and had tried not to think about it. The silence in the classroom was almost deafening as Snape put down the parchment and once again let his black eyes scan the classroom. Again, they paused at Harry a little longer than anyone else.

"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making," he began. He spoke in barely more than a whisper, but they caught every word—like Professor McGonagall, Snape had the gift of keeping a class silent without effort. "As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses... I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death—if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."

The silence in the classroom was even further pronounced as everyone in the class was holding their breath unconsciously.

"Potter!" Oh god, what did I do? "What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"

The powdered what of a what now into the what? How the hell was Harry supposed to know that? Well, at least Hermione knew the answer, since she had her hand up and all. Oh right, Snape had asked him directly, answer him.

"I don't know, sir" Harry answered, trying to keep his voice even. Single me out, why don't you?

"tut, tut - fame clearly isn't everything." Snape said while sneering like a… well, like Malfoy. Harry didn't want to start thinking of it as the Slytherin way of sneering, since it was clear those labels aren't as universal as Ron seemed to think.

"Let's try again. Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?" Snape asked Harry again. Okay, was this normal for him, or did this guy have something against Harry?

"I don't know, sir." Harry repeated and the sneer and whispers from the Slytherin side of the classroom had started to bother him. Hermione was straining to get her hand up higher in the air. It was on the verge of looking painful. Was he making a point here or not?

"Thought you wouldn't open a book before coming here, eh, Potter?" Snape retorted and Harry came to realize he hated this man. He had opened it, but hadn't understood a word and gave up, but why would Snape except him to even know? Hermione's hand was now quivering from being shot up for so long and with such fervor.

"What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?" Snape asked and Harry was pretty sure they both knew Harry wouldn't know the answer, so why was Snape ignoring Hermione. She had actually stood up with her hand up in the air and Snape still acted like she didn't exist. It couldn't be the whole muggleborn thing Malfoy had against Hermione, could it? He was a professor at Hogwarts, for god's sakes!

"I don't know," said Harry quietly. Seriously, Hermione seemed to be on the verge of starting to wave her arms about to catch Snape's attention. "I think Hermione does, though, why don't you try her?"

"Sit down," he snapped at Hermione. Sure, now you notice her, you greasy haired git! "For your information, Potter, asphodel and wormwood make a sleeping potion so powerful it is known as the Draught of Living Death. A bezoar is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat and it will save you from most poisons. As for monkshood and wolfsbane, they are the same plant, which also goes by the name of aconite. Well? Why aren't you all copying that down?" Snape snapped at the class he had been ignoring for the last few minutes, double standards much?

"And a point will be taken from Gryffindor House for your cheek, Potter." Snape said over the noise and turned to fill the chalkboard with the instructions to make the potion they were going to make that day. What cheek? Even uncle Vernon wouldn't have thought his remark about Hermione knowing the answer as cheeky! He had actually pronounced the fact someone other than him knew the answer. That was the opposite of cheeky!

After that it was just everyone setting up and pairing up to make the potion on the board. Harry paired with Ron and kept on thinking over what he had said and if it could be considered cheeky or not. It made no sense to him and the process of making potions gave enough tedious repetitive chores to mumble about the injustice of it all.

"Yes, what is it, Granger?" Snape drawled in his creepy hushed tone at Hermione, who had her hand up again.

"Sir, I was just wondering why Zuri – I mean Ling-Yao, isn't attending this class?" the bushy haired girl asked and Professor Snape actually raised an eyebrow at this. There was a pause where Snape simply stared at Hermione with his eyebrow still raised.

"Ling-Yao was admitted into the hospital wing at the start of the week and madam Pomfrey did not deem her fit to attend class of yet." Snape stated evenly and Hermione's jaw dropped. Harry was surprised as well; what could have happened to the girl that had proven to at least rival Hermione in her knowledge and could make Malfoy cough up a beetle?

Maybe Harry had answered his own question. Harry turned to glare at Malfoy, but found him concentrating on reading the blackboard and making his potion, instead of fretting over Snape giving away his possible crime. Did this absolve him of doubt or not? Harry had no idea.

"Why? What happened to Zuri? Is she okay?" Hermione asked and seemed forget about her potion and her partner panicked to do what was on the blackboard.

"I am not at liberty to disclose that information without her consent, Granger. Visiting hours are from 3 PM to 8 PM. Now you have a potion to focus on!" Snape's tone left no argument and Hermione turned back to micromanaging her own potion and Harry turned his eyes from the scene. Luckily Ron had kept on working on the potion.

Unfortunately, the boy working next to them hadn't and Harry heard a loud hiss as the cauldron melted and the contents of the cauldron spilled on the table.

"Idiot boy!" Snape hissed and waved his wand angrily to make the corrosive potion disappear "I suppose you added the porcupine quills before taking the cauldron off the fire?" The boy couldn't get a word out of his mouth and shrunk back as the imposing figure of Snape towered over him. Then he un-expectantly rounded up on Harry and Ron.

"You—Potter—why didn't you tell him not to add the quills? Thought he'd make you look good if he got it wrong, did you? That's another point you've lost for Gryffindor." Harry opened his mouth to protest to this, but Ron kicked him in the shin as Snape turned away from them.

"Mate, just drop it. Snape has a reputation of getting pretty nasty." Ron whispered with conviction and after a moment of contemplation Harry had to agree. Snape seemed like a real piece of work, maybe even rivaling uncle Vernon, since he didn't seem to make even that much sense.

The class was over soon after that and Harry and Ron both got out of the classroom before Snape could make up any other reasons to take points from Gryffindor. They had classes after Potions and Hermione's distress about her elf-eared friend became apparent as she was constantly checking the clock and actually didn't raise her hand a few times. This was unheard and the rest of Harry's House was whispering about her connection with the Slytherin girl. Harry had spent most of his train ride talking with Ron, but he had wondered at how the elf girl could keep Hermione talking excitedly by only writing short sentences or doodling something. Hermione's outburst at Ron badmouthing the girl also hinted that the girl had left quite an impression on her.

The last class of the day ended and Ron was voicing his eagerness to get dinner already as Harry caught a glimpse of the bushy-haired girl stuffing her schoolbag haphazardly. It was obvious that she was going to go visit the white-haired elf girl and Harry was contemplating if he should do the same. The girl had been nice and it would take a load of his mind to know she wasn't dying, at least.

"Hermione, you're going to go and see Zuri, aren't you?" Harry asked as they happened to be leaving the classroom at the same time. Ron gave him a surprised look and Hermione flinched out of her thoughts and looked equally surprised. It was probably because Hermione thought Harry shared Ron's opinions about Slytherins, he probably would if he hadn't met Zuri himself.

"Yes, I was going to go and see her, but maybe I should eat dinner before that… Why do you ask?" Yes, she was definitely suspicious about his motives. It shouldn't be surprising with the more than apparent hostility between the two Houses, but Harry didn't want to bully anyone just because they were different. He'd had enough of that back with the Dursleys.

"I don't know where the hospital wing is, exactly. So, it would be easier if we went to visit her together," Harry said.

"Yes, that does make sense." She gave a look towards Ron, who was looking conflicted about the conversation. "I guess we should get dinner first, though." Ron seemed much less conflicted about it after this. Harry mentally joined Hermione in rolling his eyes at Ron.

**Zuri Ling-Yao**

It had been a pain convincing Madam Pomfrey to let Zuko stay in the ward with her, now that she had to watch out for her new Head of House finding out about it. She couldn't do anything about catching whatever the woman was thinking about whenever they locked eyes, but she fought back the urge to give her any kind of unnatural mental nudge. It had taken her three days of looking sullen and depressed to have the witch open a window to let the relatively small owl in. He was overjoyed to see his master again and conveyed his experiences of the past few days in greater detail immediately. Zuri hadn't known that a collection of images and scents and sounds could feel excited, or sad, but Zuko's recollection seemed overjoyed beyond belief. Maybe it was just the owl's current state of mind coloring his memories, but it was a fun little detail about her new power nonetheless.

After she had access to her owl and books again, she was content on reading her books and seeing what she could actually make her wand do. Not being able to speak the spells aloud was as big of a problem she had thought. It was explained in the book in detail, but it was mostly in the way how the word was said. Was it a matter of controlling one's breathing, or did the actual words have a meaning? Her medical treatments also made it hard for her to study, since she was usually too drowsy or numb to even try to do anything with her wand. If using her wand was anything like bending, then she had to be able to at least control her body.

Her new Head of House visited a few times during the week, but she had been too drugged up to do anything but acknowledge it. She had found that the man had brewed special potions and poultices to treat her burns. It was no doubt part of his job description, but Zuri still felt grateful for it.

She heard the doors of the hospital wing open, but didn't see the need to raise her head, as her bed was right next to the healing witch's office, where she could see her most of the time. Zuri knew it was because she was mute and couldn't alert the witch in as many ways as a normal person could, but the loss of privacy bothered her somewhat. It sounded like several pairs of footsteps, but she opted out of over analyzing them, since she was still trying to figure out Potions. It was ironic that it was the only subject where she wasn't greatly disadvantaged and she couldn't figure it out. Memorizing the recipes was made harder than it should be by the fact that she couldn't help asking _why _the ingredients acted as they were alleged to act in this infernal book!

"Excuse me, I'm looking for Zuri Ling-Yao. Is she taking visitors?" The talker was standing at the door of the office and talking to the healing witch. The voice sounded familiar and the list of people that would visit her wasn't very long, so she immediately recognized Hermione's voice. Madam Pomfrey glanced at Zuri before responding to the girl and Zuri nodded in response. Her burns were severe and painful, but nothing life threatening and she still had a few hours before she was scheduled to be so drugged up that she saw colorful dancing ponies singing about cupcakes…

Sometimes she doubted what the healing witch made her drink.

"She's right over there. Try and keep it short, the poor girl needs her rest." The healing witch said and motioned towards Zuri through the glass. Zuri closed the potions textbook and put it aside just in time to brace for a mass of brown hair running over to her and coming in for a hug. Okay, her mind seemed agitated and it was clear she wasn't thinking straight, so Zuri gritted her teeth as Hermione's hands pressed on the bandages on her back. She had enough sense to be gentle about the hug and she couldn't have known about her back.

"Zuri, I just found out today. I'm sorry for not visiting before, but it's the start of the school year and if I don't pay attention now, then it will be hard to catch up and we didn't have any classes with Slytherin before today and I know it shouldn't be an excuse but Gryffindor and Slythering don't really –" She suddenly let go of Zuri and stepped back, face blushing from realizing how intrusive her behavior could be in Zuri's mind. "Sorry about that, I have been thinking of what you would look like and to see that you're okay made me feel relieved."

Zuri reached to her nightstand to set her book down and grabbed the muggle-style notebook and pen from it. Madam Pomfrey had enough common sense to realize quills and parchment wouldn't be very practical with the amount of writing Zuri would have to do to communicate, so she had procured the two muggle things for her. Zuri hadn't wasted parchment telling her she had her own set before that, so now she at least had a spare set.

Zuri set the notebook on her lap and looked up to Hermione. She did so to think of what to write, but noticed that both Harry and Ronald had accompanied Hermione and were now standing there awkwardly as Hermione's sudden outburst had perplexed them. She liked Harry and it could be that if Zuri showed that her sudden invasion didn't bother her, then she would get past the initial awkwardness faster. Zuri decided against writing it down and waved for Harry to come closer for a hug. Hugging had never been a thing in her life, but she had nothing against it. Harry thought it was awkward, but still gave Zuri a short hug without any mental arm wrestling. Zuri then turned to write on her notebook while the gryffindors scavenged the medical wing for chairs, there was only one next to her bed and Hermione had claimed it as her own already.

"It's nice of you to visit. Would you like to play a game of chess?" Zuri held up her notebook and pointed to the set on her nightstand with her pen. Both Hermione and Harry mumbled a positive answer and thought if it would be too rude to ask about the reason she was in the hospital wing. Ronald Weasley had no such reservation, not that it surprised Zuri. It was one of the reasons she disliked the idiot, though him being an idiot was a big part.

"So, what happened for you to land you in the hospital wing?" Zuri had known he would be the one to ask the question if she didn't acknowledge their bafflement first. Harry kicked Ron in the shin and Hermione gave the ginger buffoon a nasty look. Zuri felt rather accomplished while Ron rubbed his chin. "You were all thinking it…"

"Zuri, you don't have to tell us if you don't want to…" Hermione said and laid a hand on her shoulder. She had only dodged the subject to see Ronald harmed, but the comfort was appreciated. Zuri looked away and contemplated on how much to tell them. The mass murder was out of the question, but should she tell them about her systematic crippling by burning, or dodge the subject? Telling them about what had happened felt… She didn't want to do it, but she felt like they deserved an answer. She didn't want to lie to them, Hermione and Harry, at least.

Zuri looked at her notebook and didn't know what she could write there that wouldn't hurt the image they have of her. She set the pen down and levitated the set of chess pieces over to the bed with a wave of her hand. She looked up to see Hermione and her friends looking at her in awe. They were amazed by the fact she hadn't used her wand to do what she did, not by the act itself. They seemed to view it as impressive. Zuri didn't really understand it, but still noticed herself straightening her posture as the chess pieces arranged themselves. She wrote the question of who was to play against her, but as they continued to be baffled by her simple show of telekinesis she wrote the question they wanted her to ask.

"What's so shocking?" She wrote and snapped her fingers to draw their attention to her question.

"You didn't you use your wand!" The Gracious and Patient Ronald blurted out while pointing a finger at her. The temptation to make someone jump out of a window had never been greater, but his bluntness did speed things along. Zuri simply gestured Ronald to go on and explain what was so shocking about it, but unsurprisingly his thinking wasn't very impressive. "Is that some kind of elf thing?"

"Ronald!" Hermione scolded the idiot and took a short breath before speaking again. "It is entirely possible to cast spells without a wand and some spells only work when cast without using words. Zuri's condition makes all of her spells silent and from what I've read wandless spells are just a step beyond casting a spell you know without saying it aloud. It is not an "elf thing"; she's just that much more adept at casting spells than you."

Hermione's annoyance to Ronald's insensitivity was apparent and Zuri felt the same way about Ron's assumption that it was an "elf thing", but the reason she could use a simple levitation spell was because she had spent a better part of a year living in the minds of fire benders, that used the movements of their bodies and channeling their innate energy to control a fickle thing like fire. Controlling a spell that made things float was easy in comparison, but the fact it was her body doing it would take some getting used to.

"My aptitude for not using my wand might be an elf thing, to be fair. I get the same result, but I am not sure I use the same spell you do. Hermione, would you like to play a game of chess?" Zuri motioned towards the chess board and waited. Hermione glanced at her two friends and Zuri realized the problem before she even spoke. Chess, even wizard chess, wasn't a very interesting thing to watch.

"I would love to, but maybe we could… talk, or play something else." Hermione said and glanced towards her two friends. A quick glance in their direction told Zuri that Harry felt like he was intruding on Hermione and her and Ronald just thought that her red eyes were kind of unnerving. It was amazing how much you could hate someone just because of how stupid they are…

Zuri wrote the word "suggestions?" on her notepad and as usual Ronald was the first to act by going to the healing witch and coming back with a deck of cards. Zuri didn't actually know any of this world's card games, but the rules should be easy to learn with casual eye contact and instructions. Card games were usually simple and relied on either mathematics, or luck. Ronald dealt the whole deck among the four of them and then the game seemed to be about trying to throw a higher card than the one before you. The goal of the game seemed to be to be the last one with cards, as if you couldn't top the card the player before you threw in, then you had to throw two out. Not really challenging, but should pass the time.

Then the pile of cards on her bed exploded into flames and the fire licked at her face. She could feel her muscles lock up and the smell of burning hair and the sound of someone laughing immediately took her back into that small room in the metal tower. She could feel the shackles digging into her skin and her brother's green flame flickering just at the edge of her vision.

"_I told you, didn't I? There's no way something like you could have friends. Every single person you meet will smell the blood on your hands and hate you for it. I don't have to do much, since they'll torture you for me." Her brother laid a hand on her shoulder and leaned in close to hiss his closing statement into her ear, like he had always done to torture her, since her ears were so much more sensitive. "You will die alone and in pain like the filthy little parasite you are."_

"Zuri?" Hermione said, opposite to her dead brother. She acted like her brother wasn't there, just so that Zuri would start trusting her again and her and her mouth breathing friends could hurt her and laugh at it again. So that they could trick her into playing a card game and then have the cards explode on her face, when they knew perfectly well she had been burned!

Hermione set her hand on Zuri's shoulder, very much like her brother did and Zuri's hand moved without any conscious thought behind it, but still with the full force of her mind moving with it. She could see Hermione and her friends get slammed backwards even before her hand touched them and could hear the crack as Hermione smashed into the healing witch's office. She heard a softer crack as Harry slammed into the rocky corner of the witch's small office with his elbow and the in the air before unceremoniously skidding to a halt on the polished marble floor. Ronald had nothing to smash into as close and he smashed onto another bed and then grazed the wall before hitting his head on the post of another bed and stopping.

The healing witch stormed out of her office and pointed her wand at Zuri, but Zuri couldn't hear the words. She couldn't hear anything but her fiercely beating heart and only feel rage. Her hand moved again and the bed next to her upturned and came between her and whatever spell the witch had tried to use on her. Zuri felt her body jerk and barely acknowledged the red stains that appeared on her bed sheets as a result. The bed was blasted to the side by the spell hitting it instead of her and the witch was moving her wand and opening her mouth to do it again. Zuri moved her hand and the chairs Hermione and her friends had sat on lifted into the air and all barreled towards the witch as one. She would not have anyone hurt her! NOT AGAIN!

Another flash of red registered from behind the witch and Zuri had enough time to see the dark clad potions master, her Head of House, pointing his wand at her. She could not trust anyone; she had been foolish to ever think that.

* * *

><p><strong>DUN DUN DUUN! Okay, stop freaking out. No one died just yet. That is all I will say. As this chapter ends, no one Zuri threw or threw things at was dead at that specific point of time. Bleeding, in pain and laying motionless, but not clinically dead. Just throwing that out there.<strong> 

**Crazy Laughter  
><strong>


	6. 346

**Here it is. I am kind of surprised how quickly I got this done. I have been pretty slow lately... read it.  
><strong>

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><p><strong>Chapter 6<strong>

**346  
><strong>

Snape could only stand there in awe of the scene before him. He had actually thought the Gryffindor bookworm's concern to be genuine, but from the scene he had just walked into and defused before it escalated, that was not the case. The trio of gryffindors, that had that Potter brat and a Weasley among them, had done something to set off Ling-Yao's considerable magical power. The best course of action for now would be to tend to their wounds and get them the hell away from Ling-Yao, before she woke up.

"Pomfrey, why did you let three gryffindors anywhere near my student?" He snarled at Madam Pomfrey in anger. Right now he didn't care that she had jurisdiction over her ward, but she really should have known better than to let something like three 11-year old gryffindors anywhere near an abuse victim of the same age. As much as he hated the trio of gryffindors for being such prime examples of their house, they were also hurt by a member of his own house and needed medical attention. The Weasley was already whining and getting up, but the Potter brat and the other Gryffindor, whose name escaped him, were seemingly unconscious.

"Oh shut up and check the girl over there." Pomfrey huffed and rushed to check over Potter. Snape rushed to the bushy haired girl, Granger, now that he saw that poufy bush of hair again, and ran his gglowing wand over her head and shoulders. It was a wordless spell that you learned if your profession even touched on healing and let you check for bruises and breaks in the bone: bruising and a minor fracture in her left shoulder, bruises on her upper back and a fracture in her cranium. A concussion was a given, but his abilities were not enough to know the extent of soft tissue damage.

"Granger needs your care, Pomfrey. I'm sure Potter will live." Snape said and glanced to where the witch was carrying Potter to a bed with a spell. How could Ling-Yao know a spell with such force behind it? Could she have picked it up in wherever she was raised? The reason why she had lashed out was the three gryffindors, but why would an eleven-year old know how to send three other people and various heavy objects across a room? Snape left the Granger girl and walked over to Ling-Yao's bed. He glanced down onto the bed sheets and saw exactly what had triggered the girl's mental breakdown; a scattered deck of exploding snap. He gathered every single one of the cards with anger for Pomfrey's negligence. She had treated the girl's burns, so she should have known how she could react to things exploding near her. He set the deck face down, to stop it from exploding. He hated the damn game and how much burn salve students used up during the year because of it. Half of the brews he did were for either treating burns, or growing back eyebrows.

"You are not to blame, Ling-Yao. Gryffindors can't shake off their manes, as much as Slytherins are unable to shed their scales." Snape knew that the girl couldn't hear him in any conscious part of her mind, but from what this girl's unconscious mind could do, he didn't know if it made a difference which part he talked to. He had used the basic knockout spell by impulse and couldn't find any faults in his actions afterward. She was going ballistic over what the Gryffindors had done and wouldn't listen to reason. Her obvious latent magical power and the depth of her psychological trauma made her a danger to herself and others. Snape reached down to her and set her more comfortably on the bed. He felt a damp spot on the sheets as he moved the girl's head back on the pillow. He didn't have to stop to figure out what it was.

Tears; The girl had trusted at least one of the gryffindors enough to allow them to start the game. With her ability in legilimency, it only deepened the sense of betrayal. She had known someone well enough to trust _their_ friends and then this happens. He could only hope the Gryffindors felt even a fraction of the guilt they should for doing this. As the head of House for Slytherin, he had more experience with children with similar histories of abuse. Something like what happened here today could affect the girl's life for decades in the future. She will be hesitant to trust anyone again in the future, but Snape couldn't fault her for that. knowing what there was out in the world. It was the girl's gist in legilimency that made this situation more complicated than what he'd encountered before. It could deepen, or alleviate her trust issues and Snape didn't know which it would do if she kept using it to have free reign on the thoughts of those around her. Would locking away her legilimency help, or hinder her?

He would have to talk to the girl, when she was lucid and sane, to make that decision. Also, he was not quite sure, but doing what she did at her age couldn't be normal. It was not accidental magic, she had controlled the effects precisely enough to challenge an adult and without using a wand. He would have to consult with other professors before deciding anything.

**Toph Bei Fong**

Team Avatar, as Sokka had come to call them, had been moving through the Fire Nation in a steady pace. What had happened at the still nameless military base had forced them to move hidden by a cloud of mist Aang and Katara willed into being with their water-bending. As much as they were bending the water to move around them, the humidity was still insane. Toph couldn't see what it did to her hair, but after a day it felt like her hairband was holding back something truly fearsome. The things humidity did to her hair were truly a sight to behold, if the reactions of the servants back home were to be believed. When they landed on that first day she was actually kind of afraid of what would happen when she took the hairband off, but it had gotten so uncomfortable that she had no choice.

"OH MY GOD, WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?" Sokka screamed and scrambled back at the sight. Of course he would be the first to notice it, why would it be anyone else? Her hairband had flown off somewhere and it was hard to make out from all the other debris lying around. From the coolness in the air, it was dark already, but it would help if someone who could see would help look for it.

"Shut up and look for my hairband!" Toph shouted and floated out a fistful of dust to catch the humidity caught in her hair. If all else failed, then she could use earth bending to force her hair to bend to the will of her hairband. As tomboyish as she was, she still didn't want to cut her hair too short, no matter how convenient it would be. She didn't care to act like girls were expected to, but she would still like to be recognized as one.

"Want me to help with your hair, Toph?" Katara asked after telling Sokka to stop screwing around. He was trying to make a joke out of it, but after seeing that no one was in the mood he helped unload Appa and set up camp. Their overall mood had been more morose after what had happened to Zuri. A murder-suicide of a victim of such extreme abuse tended to lower your spirits. The fact that Aang had been the weapon she used to do it didn't help either. "I can water-bend the humidity right out."

"Yeah, thank you." Toph muttered out as Katara started doing her thing. Toph sat there and thought about Zuri and if she could have done something to save her. She knew she shouldn't keep thinking about it and that it would only distract her, but Toph had been the only one she could talk to normally and what Toph had said drove the girl to do what she did. Toph felt as much of a murderer as Aang did. Why had it been so hard for Zuri to live and forget? Could it really be as simple as pain? Had her family really broken her that badly, that living on was too much of a challenge? Katara had told her that it was very unlikely she would live long, but did that really justify rushing to get her revenge?

"It's not your fault, Toph." Katara said as she smoothed out Toph's hair, flicking moisture out as she could draw it out. "It's enough that Aang's beating himself up for what happened with that girl."

Toph didn't feel like starting up the argument about what Zuri did again. Zuri had talked to her directly before doing it, so maybe that's why she was more understanding of what she did. Aang and the others seemed to see Zuri as the monster that used them for her own revenge. There was a silent understanding between them to try and not bring it up.

"_Would you blame a child for running away?" _An unfamiliar voice said in the distance. It was in that same strange monotome the possessed Sokka had talked in, but it was definitely someone else who talked.

"Fire nation!" Toph yelled and shot up, with her hair a more manageable size, but still not bound in the neat bun she preferred. She slammed her foot on the ground and noticed that there were groups of fire nation soldiers, coming toward them from all directions. "They have us surrounded!"

The fire nation soldiers started to sprint towards their group as their approached had been noticed already. Toph raised pieces of earth to protect herself and felt fire hitting it from the distant fire-benders. It was hard making out their movements in the forest when there were so many of them and with all the small critters of the forest running away. She could only pinpoint the clo9sest ones and send rocks flying at them, but she hit more trees than people. This is exactly why she shouldn't be thinking about Zuri, it distracted her! She could have seen this coming earlier if she weren't distracted by guilt and they wouldn't be under fire.

"_Would you blame a father for fighting a war?" _One of the soldiers attacking them muttered out before falling to the ground and tumbling down a hill. Toph could hear the alarmed voices of the people around the fallen soldier and the distraction helped Toph take aim at the soldiers and ease Sokka's preparation for escape. Aang and Katara were holding their own and keeping the fire nation from overwhelming them.

"_Is fighting back a sin?" _Another soldier muttered out and fell limp at another part of the surrounding soldiers. The soldiers around this one became distracted and frantic as well, probably scanning the trees for the one they thought was shooting them.

"_What is real?" _A soldier on the other side of Appa muttered, before falling on the ground motionless. Toph didn't know if the soldiers were dying or going unconscious, but the soldiers around them seemed frightened enough.

"Zuri, is that you!" Toph screamed and suddenly many of the soldiers stopped in their tracks. They didn't fall down like before, but now it affected more than half of the fire-benders attacking them. The other half stopped their attack and looked to their frozen companions in alarm.

"_Toph. Are you real?" _That disturbing monotone voice was coming from each and every of the frozen fire-bender's mouths. Toph could feel a few more of them starting to stand still as the words left their mouths.

"Damn right, I'm real! How can you be alive, Zuri? Where are you?" Toph shot the earth covering her back and tried concentrate on finding someplace where she didn't feel anything. The still soldiers were hard to read, but there were no obvious blind spots.

"What the… Toph, are you saying that girl is doing this?" Aang asked and his heartbeat got even quicker and he started glancing all over the place, like he was trying to see the mental possession coming.

"_I cannot see you. I am not there." _Now every single one of the fire nation benders was standing perfectly still and staring in their general direction.

"This is so creepy. I say we get on Appa and get the heck out of here." Sokka piped in nervously.

"_I am sorry, Aang."_

"You used me! We saved you and you used me to kill everyone on that island!" Aang was very agitated and the way he slammed his foot down on the ground made Toph flinch. Geez, keep the accidental earth-bending to a minimum…

"_346 people: 87 benders, 59 military personnel, 57 miners and 130 prisoners of war, along with my mother, my father and my brother. I can tell you the names of all of their children, parents and loved ones."_

"Three hundred… and forty-six…" Aang's bravado disappeared at the exact number of people he failed to save, the number of people his power helped kill. "Why would you do that? They couldn't all be responsible! You killed innocent people!"

"_Would you excuse the murder of murderers? Would you kill a killer? Would you take your own life for that sin?" _The fire-benders Zuri was controlling all shifted in unison and it made all of them flinch back. Zuri had control of dozens of fire-benders. Killing them was well within her power. The fact she was arguing about the morality of murder was also disconcerting.

"There's always another way! The monks taught me that killing for one's convenience is wrong and I've come to believe that." Aang was still on the ground and everything about him seemed exhausted.

"_I hate you." _The soldiers droned out and suddenly Toph couldn't see them at all. She tensed, but from her friends reactions the soldiers hadn't moved. _"You think you could have been the paragon of virtue if you were in my situation? Are you saying I should have condoned my family's disgust of me with a smile?"_

"Zuri, we don't –"

"_You only object to me using you to achieve it? You blame me for using you instead of forcing them to kill each other? You dare blame me for hating my tormentors!" _Toph could hear the fire nation benders approaching, walking towards them in unison by the sound of it, but she couldn't pinpoint any of them. She was just as blind as everyone thought she was. It was as frightening she had thought. _"You feel sorry for yourself for something I did all you want…"_

The way the benders droned that sentence out made them think there was something else she was going to say, but stopped herself. If she were a normal person standing in front of them right now, then she would probably be pacing around trying to calm herself.

"Zuri, where are you? How did you survive?" Toph said and then reconsidered just who she was talking to; a disembodied mind-bender she thought died right in front of her. "Are you alive?"

_Are you real, Toph? I am not there. Am I real? What am I?_

Zuri didn't use the fire-benders to talk this time and Toph could hear how confused she was. Or maybe she could _feel _how confused she was, since she was inside her head.

"I don't know, Zuri. Are you in any pain?" There was a lengthy silence before Zuri answered and Katara was getting antsy about being surrounded by being surrounded by dozens of fire-benders, who were controlled by a mind-bender who had killed hundreds for revenge. Then again, now that Toph thought about it, her being calm about the situation was strange. "Don't worry Katara. She won't hurt us."

_I am -_

"And is that supposed to calm me? She killed hundreds just to get her revenge on her family and now I'm supposed to trust her when she's controlling a group of fire-benders and shouting at us?"

"_You gave up on me. Your mercy would have only prolonged my pain."_

"THAT DOES NOT EXCUSE KILLING –" Before Katara could really get her rant going, she suddenly went rigid and Toph could feel her heart rate rise suddenly. She fell to the ground and started screaming between franticly gasping for breath.

"What are you doing? Zuri, stop it!"Aang and Sokka rushed over to Katara, but Toph turned toward the fire nation benders in hope to reach Zuri. "STOP HURTING MY FRIENDS!"

"_That is my pain, Katara." _Zuri stopped doing whatever she had been doing to Katara and she curled into a ball. She was shaking and not responding to Aang and Sokka calling her. _"That is what shaped me into what I am."_

_I do not want to hurt you. I do not want to hurt your friends. I do not know what is real. I want you to understand. I want to know what I am. I want to know if I deserve to be where I am._

"_You should leave. I'll make sure these guys will not remember you."_

"Why would we trust you?" Sokka growled out, trying to find someone to glare menacingly at among the monotone soldiers.

"_Should I kill them right now? Then you'd know they wouldn't follow you."_

"Sokka, we really should just go." Aang said as Katara got on shaky legs and they walked to Appa. They couldn't fight an enemy they couldn't see and with the guilt about what ahd happened to Zuri, they were not sure they wanted to. She was not someone they could fight, or someone they could help A few of the fire-benders had broken off from the group standing around them and seemed to be making a firepitas Toph hesitated on getting back on Appa.

"What are you going to do to them, Zuri?" Toph asked, somewhat dreading the answer. Zuri didn't seem to like to be labeled a murderer, but hadn't refuted the claim. What are the deaths of a few dozen fire nation soldiers to 346 others? Zuri had been nice; Toph thought they could have been friends, as grim as the other girl's situation was.

_I will implant false memories of them deciding to give up the search and get drunk. It will not be hard to make them forget you if you are nowhere to be seen. They will have headaches, but I will not be hurt over them this time._

Toph didn't like the way she just mentioned being hurt so easily, knowing the extent she had been hurt before. Was this what Zuri was now, a phantom with full use of her power, but with no real body? Was she one of those spirits Aang talked about? Toph jumped up on Appa's saddle and she couldn't see anything the possessed soldiers were doing. There was a tense moment that stretched onto be a tense hour.

_I want to be real._

Toph didn't tell the rest of the gang about this. The words sounded like after thoughts, like something you mention to someone while meeting them after a long time. After that, Toph felt what she could only call Zuri's presence wink out again. Toph wasn't sure if knowing that she was alive made her feel any better, or not. Zuri was no longer a victim, but her being a threatening presence over them didn't seem right either. Her guilt on only being able to watch Zuri die was replaced by a fear of what she had helped create. She was a disembodied mind-bender, sure, but she was a disembodied mind-bender who was angry and seemed to give little value to human life.

Before they met her, their journey had seemed a lot more fun.

**Zuri Yao Ling**

Zuri opened her eyes to stare at a darkened stone roof. She followed the arches of the roof and remembered she was in an old castle to learn witchcraft. The arches blurred out and her throat clenched futilely. No matter the situation, her tears were always silent ones and she could hide them, especially now when her sadness did not cause anyone to have nightmares. If it was a dream or if she was somehow visiting the world she left behind, she was still a monster. She had hurt the only people to show her any kindness in that world. She had forced her pain unto them and blamed them for feeling guilty of her fate.

She wanted to be understood. She wanted them to tell her if her actions were justified or not. She wanted to know if she deserved to be at Hogwarts and have a chance to have a normal life. She wanted to know if her scars were enough to condone for the price of her guilt. What could make up for the death of 346 people? Was what she had just experienced only a dream? The details were fading already, but it had felt as real as any other time she had used her power to control someone. The memories would fade because they weren't hers and were fragmented among those she had controlled. It was a whole other trick to learn things from someone's mind, but she had done that in the past, as well.

"You're awake, thank goodness." The healing witch's voice rung out and Zuri tried to bring a hand up to wipe her tears, but her arms wouldn't move. It was like she was in chains again and even though her rational side told her an institute for learning wouldn't do something like that, but the fear still rushed back. This woman had tended to her before, but now she had attacked a fellow student, so was she to be arrested now? What had happened to Hermione? If they were keeping her immobilized, then had she died? Had she grown her body count so easily in a fit of rage? Why couldn't she stop killing? What was wrong with her?

"Now, now, don't cry, they're all fine. You can't move because of the medicine we had to use to stabilize your magical center. It should pass by morning." The witch sounded sincere in a strange professionally motherly way that Zuri hadn't encountered before. It was either the medicine or her strange dream/visit to another world, but she was feeling drowsy when the initial fear of being chained up again passed. She didn't like not being able to move, but her rational side won over her fear eventually. Her brain hurt and she hoped to sleep it off.

**Hermione Granger**

"Who?" Hermione Granger had known she was a witch for less than a year and this was the first time she woke up to the hoot of an owl. The way the wizarding world used them as messengers, she thought it was a more occurring phenomenon, but the owls all came to deliver mail at a determined time at Hogwarts. Hermione had a theory about it being part of the countless enchantments around and in the school that made them act like that, or maybe it was an understanding between owl familiars. Hermione opened her eyes to find the meanest looking owl ever staring right at her from the end of her bed. "Whu?"

The owl looked like it was glaring at her, with only common decency stopping it from starting to shred her face with the sharp talons sinking in the wooden end of her bed. Owls were something that were everywhere in the wizarding world and being afraid of one was as inconvenient as a muggle being afraid of electricity. Now Hermione was afraid to move and kept wondering why there was an aggressive owl in the hospital ward of Hogwarts. Why was she in here, in the first place? She didn't remember being sick, or how she got here. The owl glared a little harder before extending its right wing and turning its head towards it a little, like a human would jerk their head to point out something.

Hermione turned her head towards where the owl was pointing with some apprehension; she didn't want to let the owl out of her sight. She saw Madam Pomfrey's office and the bed next to it, but nothing else. She was seeing the other side of the office than the one where Zuri –

"Oh god, is Zuri okay?" Hermione gasped, bits and pieces of what had happened before she was knocked out rushing back to her. Zuri had told her she was raised by muggles, so she should have at least asked if she was okay with exploding cards. The owl folded its wing back and glared at her some more. It was not like the bird was especially large, somehow it was just more menacing than any other owl she had seen, ever. "I'm so sorry for the exploding snap! I should have known you wouldn't know they exploded and asked about it, it's all my fault."

Suddenly, she hoped she had been right about the extent of control Zuri had over animals. If she were wrong, then she had just apologized to a random owl, which was glaring at her even harder. The owl suddenly took flight, scaring the hell out of Hermione, and flew to the other side of Pomfrey's office.

"Can't you control that bird? I'm already letting it stay in the ward, so at least it shouldn't be harassing the other patients!" There was an angry sounding hoot in response and Pomfrey muttered some words Hermione was pretty sure she shouldn't know about just yet. Zuri's owl flew back to the end of her bed a moments later with a piece of paper in its mouth. The owl just sat there and glared at her for a full minute, before suddenly dropping the piece of paper right on her forehead. The sudden impact caused her to jerk back and shriek. The owl looked like it was very satisfied with himself as Hermione glared back. Hermione decided not to be angry at a bird and picked up the folded piece of paper.

"_Please excuse Zuko, he's very protective and likes to play with people. I understand that you didn't know how traumatizing fire is for me, but what made me hurt you was that you laughed at it. It was a game and meant to surprise you, but it made me remember some things I didn't want to, then you laughed. I understand that, but I do not forgive it. I am dangerous and a Slytherin, you should stay away."_

There was that Slytherin thing again! It might have been because Ron had been so sure about it that Hermione was so sure Zuri was wrong, but it still didn't sit well with her. She told the owl to get her a pen and it came back a moment later with a ballpoint pen.

_"You're fairly brilliant and you have a deep understanding of finer magic. Maybe you're a Slytherin and maybe we are in Gryffindor and maybe that is supposed to mean something, but I still consider you a friend. Also, you have hurt me and I do hope that one day I will understand why you did it. It is what friends do, is it not? Harry and Ron are my friends, despite the fact that Ron is rather pig-headed at times. Well, most times. But if you are willing to make and effort, I will still like for us to be friends, even if that would mean you not being a friend with mine."_

The owl gave her a long look before taking the piece of paper in its mouth and extending a leg for the pen. It was fascinating how Zuri could communicate with animals without words, but Hermione had to wonder if they could talk back. This owl seemed smart enough for that, smarter than most familiars even, from what she'd read.

"That bird's a menace and you know it!" Madam Pomfrey said as she walked out of her office and to the side of Hermione's bed. "And how are you feeling this fine morning? Do you have a headache, feel dizzy at all?"

She asked these questions while checking her eyes with a light coming from her wand and then moved it to the back of her head. Zuri's owl came back and tried to give Pomfrey his glare, but ended up being the one to look away after a few seconds. No matter how intimidating of a bird you were, you didn't mess with Pomfrey. As usual, the owl dropped the piece of paper on her head. Zuri's response was written under her previous message.

"_You are fairly brilliant, too. Ronald will get what's coming to him, don't you worry about that. Harry does seem to be more agreeable out of the two and I have a feeling I've heard his name somewhere. I do find the whole House segregation thing suspect and it is good to know you're prepared to look beyond that. It does not change the fact I almost killed you. I need to control my anger before I go anywhere near Ronald again. You can visit me if I'm not expelled."_

The owl flew off after this and Hermione took this as a sign that Zuri didn't want to talk anymore. At least she didn't hate her enough to not let her visit. Even thinking about whatever had made Zuri to react in such an extreme way was something that made Hermione uncomfortable, but how could she have known that such an amazing person would have something like that in their past?

"You've healed up quite nicely. Now, get your things and go get breakfast. I will not let you play hookey while perfectly healthy." Pomfrey unwrapped the bandages on her head and levitated her uniform from the cupboard next to the bed.

"But, how about Zuri? When will she get out?" Hermione asked as Pomfrey was already rushing away.

"I'm sure she'll let you know. Now get going or you'll be late!" Pomfrey snapped and frightened Hermione into action. She grabbed her bag after putting her robes on and rushed to get breakfast. As brilliant as she was, to understand Zuri's situation with two loving parents that accepted her was still far off. Few people without similar experiences could even imagine it.

**Severus Snape**

The day was filled with the usual amount of idiocy and mediocrity Snape was accustomed to, but he still felt distracted during the lessons. The stunt the Ling Yao girl had pulled in the hospital wing kept nagging at him. Sure, her condition was critical after straining her magical power to such extent without proper training, but the amount of control she had shown despite her emotions was unnatural. The power of what she had done was what had caused harm to her, since she had been able to control it better without a wand than most could with it. The girl had not attended a single class in Hogwarts and was still able to levitate objects without even using her wand, simply by reading a book.

There were many other mysteries surrounding the girl, as well. Snape had taken another look at the files that had appeared on his desk after the sorting; Names, addresses and other information about his furure students. He had not been particularly interested about the girl at that time, so he had gotten to her file only late in the night. At first, he had thought it to be a clerical error and had contacted McGonagall about it. There were not additional pages to add to her file and the admission papers had only been sent a few days prior to the start of the school year, after the ministry had sent a notice of a young witch. She thought it to be the fault of the ministry of magic and so did Snape, but it still unnerved him.

The address her admission to Hogwarts was sent to was a muggle hospital. At least that would explain the muggle medicine she had with her, but why would the ministry of magic send the notification so late and why wouldn't they have any information about her parentage, or even where she was before being hospitalized? Snape had contacted the ministry about it and the only explanation they could give was that she had not been in the country before that time and had not been admitted into any other school, so a notification was sent to Hogwarts, they knew as little as he did.

He was not usually the kind to go chasing mysteries, but this girl's case was starting to interest him. There was no way someone with that much talent would only manifest magic just before turning 11, so either she had apparated from a far off land, that was not in the jurisdiction of any magical academy, or wizarding community, which was highly unlikely. Or someone had kept her intentionally under the ministry of magic's radar and then systematically burned her to the point that even moving caused immense pain. Snape had seen cruelty like this, but had hoped that with Voldemort's downfall, no twisted soul would have the courage to actually commit such things. He wanted these people brought to justice and it seemed like the girl was the only lead he could follow. The ministry would take a few weeks to even decide which division the girl's case should go, because of her apparent elf heritage. As if being enrolled in Hogwarts didn't give her the same rights as any other student already.

So, here he was, staring at his immaculately organized desk, getting nervous about going up and talking to a girl, like a shy teenager. The reason he was feeling apprehensive about going in front of this girl again was that her legilimency was powerful enough to slip through his occlumency. She had been barely lucid the last time they had locked eyes, so would his mind be an open book to her now? As much as he wanted to trust his snakes, he appreciated his privacy more.

There was another mystery about the girl; her legilimency. Sure, there were cases where people were naturally gifted in the art, but the way she had prodded at his defenses and slipped through spoke of experience, rather than just talent. What kind of life had she led up to this point to get that much practice in reading people's thoughts? Had she been used as an unwilling lie detector and an extractor of information? Whatever the case, it was clear that she had been wronged either because of her talent or disability.

"No way around it, Severus…" He muttered and blew out the candle he had been reading under about half an hour ago. He was very conscious about the speed of his walk on the way to the infirmary. He didn't want to look as apprehensive about seeing one of his students as he felt. He was hardly aware of the students still wandering the halls downright hiding from him as he passed, his endeavors in trying not to appear nervous only made him more intimidating. He stormed through the doors of the infirmary a little faster than he intended and got an icy cold look from Pomfrey for it.

The girl looked up from her book as he rounded the corner of Pomfrey's office, but seemed to avoid direct eye contact for the same reason he had felt apprehensive on visiting the girl. Did this mean that she was aware of his apprehension on locking eyes, or that she couldn't control her legilimency? She closed her book and laid her notebook on it and pulled a ballpoint from her hair. She had tied it into a bun which seemed to be held together by her wand. The pointy ears seemed rather pronounced with her hair out of the way, but he couldn't argue over the practicality of it. She made a waving motion with her hand and the chair at the side of her bed slid back.

"You seem to be getting a handle on that. How are you feeling? The potion can cause dizziness."

"_Thank you. Sorry about throwing stuff at you. I'm fine." _The girl tilted the notebook in his direction and he read it.

"It's part of the job, you don't have to worry about it. You were not at fault." He took a seat on the chair she had offered and took the chance to pause. "I'm here to talk about how you were hurt." The girl's expression soured and she paused her pen before writing _"I understand" _below what she had written before.

"We know that your wounds could not have been caused by an accident. Hogwarts and the ministry of magic will do all in their power to protect you. We can bring them to justice with your co-operation. What they did was monstrous and I wish to see them to Azkaban personally." The girl stared at him for a moment, before turning back to her notebook and writing another abbreviated message.

"_They are dead."_

"How about any family we could contact?"

"_They are dead.__"_

"Was it your family who did this to you?"

The girl paused and kept her shaking hand on the notebook. Snape changed a glance at the girl's face and noticed that she was in tears. He felt utterly terrible. What was he doing, grilling a victim of such prolonged abuse like she was guilty? He turned his gaze back down and noticed the girl's shaky hand drawing a number right below her last line.

"_346"_

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><p><strong>DUN DUN DUUN! DRAMA! The last airbender and Legend of Korra roc<strong>**k. You ahould check them out.**_  
><em>


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